Did you know I have several holiday-themed MM romances? Click on the titles below for links to the respective pages at Queeromance Ink (I’m sending you there because you’ll find various retailer links, plus an excerpt, plus maybe a review, all in one place). All are on sale this month at Smashwords, but you can find them on most other ebook platforms too.
MISTLETANGO – a full-length novel set mid-December to mid-January, featuring a whirlwind vacation romance, starring an accountant and a ballroom instructor.
VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE - a short story taking place over the week leading up to Christmas, starring two retired Navy men in San Francisco.
EMPTY SHELVES, FULL HEARTS – a short story taking place over the month leading up to Christmas, featuring the shutting-down of a beloved neighborhood bookstore, starring an HR manager and a writer.
FISHNETS & TINSEL – a novelette taking place over the two weeks before New Year’s, featuring a drag show in Las Vegas, starring a pair of drag queens.
Plus, there’s STAR OF WONDER – a trans F/bi M novelette set immediately after a December wedding in Las Vegas, starring an actor and a stage lighting engineer.
But the one I want to talk about today is:
MY HOLIDAY STAR – a novella set September-December, featuring a serious look at mental health and the downside of fame, starring IT specialist Gabriel Aguilar and actor/writer Rhett Carpenter. This one opens on Rhett’s darkest moment, but gradually brightens and lightens.
My stories are all set in the real world, and I know exactly when they occur. This one happens in 2019, meaning my MCs (main characters) fall in love right before the Covid-19 pandemic hits. As the story ends, Gabriel is commuting to his job in downtown Los Angeles; Rhett has a role on a new streaming series that’s due to be released in May 2020.
Where does this fall in the storyverse?
Gabriel, created for this story, is related to Justin of HUSH. Rhett was also new when I wrote this novella but turned up in my later novel DRAMA QUEEN – the events of which occur before the events of MY HOLIDAY STAR.
In DRAMA QUEEN, Rhett is cast as a surgical pharmacist opposite Loren McCall, playing a cardiologist, in a gay romance movie called Sudden Onset (though everyone starts calling it ‘Sexual Healing’) filmed in 2013, written and produced by Mark Valance.
Mark is one of the MCs in my novel GIVING IT UP. He meets his true love Liam in 2010. In MY HOLIDAY STAR, Rhett is still friends with Mark and Liam, about to launch a podcast with Mark, and surely soon to introduce Gabriel to that circle.
Meanwhile, Gabriel works at the same law firm as Forrest Kim, one of the MCs in my novel PUBLIC OFFERING, and is friends with Forrest’s assistant Danielle. (Also at this firm is Troy Nakamura, one of the MCs of my novella THIRD TIME LUCKY.)
What happens next?
In March 2020, the governor of California ordered a quarantine lockdown. Most of the law firms in the state shuttered their offices. The one I work at already had a pretty robust remote-work infrastructure. They had to buy a fuck-ton of VPN-friendly laptops, but we didn’t lose much, if any, operational time. Gabriel’s employer has the same functionality, so he’ll work remotely, from his home office in the studio unit behind Rhett’s house in South LA.
Rhett’s new series is a high-school jocks vs geeks dramedy in which the sport is wrestling and the geek factor is academic decathlon. The producers and platform of Rhett’s series will embrace the high-school-ness of it all and let actors age, graduate, drop in from college to dispense wisdom to the new characters, and generally evolve for at least seven 13-episode “seasons” covering at least three school years.
Because Hollywood got shut down during the pandemic too, and then there were guild strikes to contend with, actors and writers faced many work interruptions between 2020-2023. Shows that were notably successful stood out. Rhett’s series is one of those. They’ll spin off an infotainment subseries, on YouTube or TikTok or both, as desperate parents and teachers glom onto internet resources to fill the gaps left by shut-down schools. Rhett gets involved with that, because he's a writer who loves research as well as a good actor. His mystery improv podcast with Mark might not be replicable, but he’s becoming competitive as a character actor. When Hollywood finally gets its feet under it again, Rhett will be in the running for plenty of new potential work.
And Gabriel likes his job. When the law firms open back up, he’ll be on a hybrid work arrangement: in office some days, remote on others. He and Rhett adopt a dog during lockdown. They get married in fall 2021, a big fat gay wedding at the ocean-view Ritz Carlton in Laguna Niguel, celebrating with their families and all the friends they’ve made since 2013.
Rhett still contends with depression from time to time, but he’s in safe hands with Gabriel.