I’m poly so like a good, responsible polyamorous person I read a lot of blogs about polyamory. I think it’s a rule or something, not sure, but fortunately a fun one. heh.

And while I’m not a parent I really enjoy the blog Poly Momma because the author is very insightful about poly issues. Recently she posted “Polyamory and a Sports Metaphor” that I thought is just brilliant. I suggest you read it, if only for the enlightenment value.

Also, I lied. I’m not just reading poly-focused blogs because I’m poly. My story series about Ursula the Werebear is at heart a polyamorous love story. It focuses on Ursula, a loner werebear, who falls in love with two werewolves, Cal and Dan, who are very much in love with each other. The tension of the story is whether the three of them can establish a working triad, particularly given how resistant Ursula is to settling down with anyone.

But it doesn’t end there. Ursula is best friends with another werewolf, Lisbeth, and they’ve traveled the country posing as sisters for several years before the start of the story. While their relationship is platonic at heart, they really are “life partners” in all the ways that matter. When Lisbeth falls in love with Tony, the rakish, handsome Alpha werewolf of the pack, it’s a serious blow to Ursula, who thinks that her friend will leave her for good now that she’s found a sexual, romantic mate.

Further down the line in the second book, a few more shifters come into the story who, themselves, are not quite monogamous either.

So, I’m reading poly blogs in order to broaden my mind concerning poly issues and what interests poly people. It’s research on my demographic as well as my subject, quite frankly.

Poly Momma’s post about explaining polyamory made me think about who I am writing these books for. Will I have to explain every choice the poly characters make? Justify it? I never have to justify a character who is monogamous, after all. To me, it’s about “they fall in love” rather than social norms and all that. And anyway, in this particular book series, the characters get enough grief just by being shifters (especially Ursula).

Of course the answer is that I am writing these books for me. As I’ve stated before, I’ve spent most of my life reading about and watching the clichéd “love triangle” stories and wondering why they all can’t just make it work together. It always seemed to me that the “one-to-one” model of romance was kind of arbitrary. Not wrong or bad, but limited.

I hope there are readers out there who feel the same way and will be willing to buy books where love triangles resolve in ways traditional romance narrative eschewed.