Why a book?

I first started writing about polyamory over on xeromag.com in 1998 or thereabouts. Since then, I’ve written about a zillion words about polyamory: on the More Than Two website, on my blog, and in forums all over the Internet.

So why a book?

The Web has limitations. When I first started thinking about a book, I wanted a way to write in more detail, to include concrete examples from my life and observations that would make the things I say less theoretical and more personal, and to be able to fill in the gaps in my ideas about polyamory. (Yes, even with all the words I’ve thrown at this website, there are still gaps.)

Also, the poly community has changed, a lot, over the last decade and a half. Polyamory is attracting interest from a much wider audience than it did when I first started exploring this whole nonmonogamy business. Almost nobody had heard of it when I started; now, it seems like almost everyone has. In some places, the Millennial Generation almost seems to regard polyamory as simply one choice among many.

That means the challenges people face when they’re starting down the road to polyamory now are different than the challenges I faced way back when. The tools and structures for healthy relationships haven’t changed, but the expectations and assumptions people carry with them as they start to explore polyamory certainly have.

So a book is, I think, an important project: not as a repackaging or replacement for morethantwo.com, but as a way to expand on the site.

Eve’s involvement in this book is really exciting to me. She came to polyamory by a different path than I did, and at a different time, so her experiences have been very different from mine. The richness that she will be able to add to the book will make it much fuller, and because of her, the book will be able to speak to a broader range of poly experience. (On top of that, it also helps that she has professional editing experience, and I’m a wordy bastard in dire need of an editor.)

So More Than Two, the book, will be a very different animal than More Than Two, the website: more detailed, more personal, more concrete, and with a wider range.

I’m very excited about this project. I hope you are, too.

Like what you’re reading on the More Than Two blog? Buy the book now at Amazon or Powell’s.