Once upon a time, four part-time drag queens lived together in a Hollywood apartment. Then, for a lot of reasons, three of them scattered. COME TO ME is about the one who’s left behind. Click the image below for product link!
Image courtesy of Mike San @mikenaboa unsplash.com
Three key things about COME TO ME:
It’s set in the real world of 2020, which means the COVID-19 pandemic is the framework. Healthcare worker Davy Sun and guitarist Barry Teller are both dealing with the challenges of remote work, the lockdown, and losing friends and family.
Most of those losses are merely situational: people leave Los Angeles because their jobs are gone, or for other reasons. Davy and Barry are among those who stay.
The pandemic is not the plot. :-) This is a love story about two people who meet through the agency of a mutual friend - in a way that is, ironically, facilitated by the pandemic.
Now, what else do you want to know? Maybe why the first rating on this novella is two stars?! Yeah, me too. Well, everyone wants something different from their love stories.
And in case the points above are insufficient content alerts, here’s another:
Davy and Barry engage in behavior that some might consider risky, or transgressive, or stupid. They take some chances in order to be together. They have opinions about what’s going on.
They also do what’s possible - this story begins and ends pre-vaccine - to avoid or mitigate the risks.
They follow social distancing guidelines outside the home;
they wear masks outside the home;
they keep their zone of contact small;
they get tested.
The fact is, most Americans made only modest, short-term changes to their behavior in response to the pandemic. Many Americans didn’t have a choice: their jobs couldn’t be done remotely. A lot of people simply had to leave their homes and mingle with others. A lot more chose to.
Davy was lucky: his job got remoted. Barry, a self-employed musician, wasn’t quite so lucky: every performance venue is closed, every concert is cancelled, recording sessions are postponed, and face-to-face teaching isn’t in the cards. He adapts, learning how to teach online. Over the course of the story, he re-imagines the future of his career.
Relationships are one of the main reasons we change our work situations. Barry wants a life with Davy, and he’s self-aware enough to know that means approaching his work a different way. Meanwhile, being with Barry gives Davy a reason to look at his own future differently.
Davy connects to my characters Sacha Lebedev of LOST & FOUND and Ro Gallo of TRIPLE X. Barry first appears in LOST & FOUND and also has a brief cameo in PROOFED.
Like all of my books and novellas, COME TO ME can be read independently. If you enjoy it, please consider leaving a positive rating or review. It really helps!