ROMANCE PROBLEMS

I don’t often blog a review about a book I can’t recommend. As a writer who has had a book published, I’m well aware of how any and every bad review can sting, whether in The New York Times Book Review or as a one-star comment on Goodreads. Sure, one weighs more than the other, but I still would be upset if Tamara in Tallahassee thought my book sucked. I want to support writers, I want to be part of getting people excited about reading, I want to stick to saying nothing when I don’t have anything nice to say.

 

But I make exceptions.

 

Sometimes even nice people are driven to react. 

 

It’s not that I hated Red, White & Royal Blue. It was okay. Mostly. The last fifty pages were, frankly, painful. I kept putting it down. Please don’t make me read more. Please make it go away. There’s no harm in being injected with sugar water, but there’s no merit either. To repeat, I didn’t hate it. I just wanted to tear pages out. Seriously. But it was a library copy. I don’t damage library books; I won’t even dog-ear a page.  

 

This isn’t going to be a review, after all. Instead, the book serves as an excuse for me to wonder about my place in the publishing world, to question who can/should write gay characters—if there is, in fact, still a place for them on pages—and to give romance readers a bit of a shake.

 

My first book was published in 2008. Middle grade fiction. It did all right in terms of sales for a smaller Canadian press. All copies eventually sold and the publisher told me they wouldn’t run another printing. You can still get an e-copy here. If you do so, I encourage you to stay silent if you don’t like it. Alas, you won’t be able to tear pages either. 

 

It’s my only book so far, but not for lack of effort. I’ve completed several manuscripts in various genres but no more book deals. I’m a one-hit wonder, but that probably stretches the definition of hit. One manuscript I’m particularly proud of is called Dead in Gay Years, a humorous comeuppance for a onetime gay god who’s suddenly dumped and is now a forty-something with a dad bod and no prospects in dating, in work, in anything. 

It’s been hard to query to agents. LGBTQ fiction is considered a niche market and there’s not a demand for books by gay cisgender white men. I’m told that status makes me “privileged” even though I spent most of my life feeling oppressed. I hid and “passed” (as straight) to minimize bullying. I feared death from AIDS. I worried about losing my job or my credibility as a teacher and then a principal. In “safe” environments such as gay bars, I was shunned as so many gays artfully perfected blank stares that looked through me in order to eye up someone hotter, sexier, a worthier conquest. At no point did I feel that being a white gay man was a privilege and yet now outsiders have deemed my life as such. I’m lumped with all other guys who are white, gay and cisgendered. There is no effort to consider how different I actually was.

 

I realize non-white, non-cisgender queer people always had greater struggles, but our community continues to be divided, both internally and externally. Apparently, I had it good. 

 

For my next manuscript, I’m considering a gay romance. It’s a calculated decision. Book deals are business decisions and M/M romance sells. Ironically, most M/M romance writers are women, often opting for gender-vague names like Chris or Kelly or choosing to use initials instead, à la J.K. Rowling or J.R.R. Tolkien. Then again, it seems most M/M romance readers are women. Presumably, they don’t need to read gay male characters from an authentically gay male viewpoint. Characters arising from a female connotation of a gay male might be are just fine.

 

That’s a lot of background—and ranting—to explain why I gave Red, White & Royal Blue (St. Martin’s Griffin, 2019) a try and forced myself to finish it, leaving all pages intact. It’s written by Casey McQuistin—yes, a woman—and it’s doing extraordinarily well. I’ve seen several agents specifically say, “I want the next Red, White & Royal Blue on their wish lists. I needed to see what all the fuss was about. I hoped to come away from it and say, “Yes! I can do this! I can be the next Casey McQuistin”…only with a penis, some pesky ear hair and a looming colonoscopy appointment I keep putting off.

 

From the outset, I didn’t like the premise. I found it ridiculous. The novel is about a romance between a prince in the British royal family and the First Son of a U.S. president. Prince Harry and Donald Trump, Jr.? Okay, I just made it icky. The story doesn’t strive to aggressively offend readers. Still, as far-fetched as the premise is, it’s also too cute, too convenient.  

 

As I struggled to stick with the book, I kept wondering why romance novels so often focus on royalty. If we’re so concerned with labeling people as privileged, why continue to spin tales about Prince Charming? Do we not grow beyond who we were at five years old, listening to parents and kindergarten teachers reading us picture books with princes and princess? Don’t we get past Disneyfied tales involving Cinderella, Princess Elsa and Ariel? 

 

While agents say they don’t want stories wherein the prince saves the princess, I’m not sure it’s progressive or even feminist to be falling for princes under any circumstance.[1] Assuming they are filthy rich, there’s still an aspect of being rescued. Pay my mortgage, sweet prince! Or, at least, both our dinners. Royal stories will always seem old-fashioned because monarchies are outdated. With the passing of Queen Elizabeth II, aren’t most of us done with the notion of a British monarchy or any monarchy? I write fiction, but I strive for it to be realistic fiction. I can’t stomach writing (or reading) romance that’s pure fantasy. 

 

Casey McQuistin can rest assured, I’m not going to dethrone her, even if some agent or editor finally decided to take a chance on another—yawn—gay, white cisgendered male author. I can’t possibly write about royal lives unless there’s a humiliating dethroning. I wouldn’t bring back the guillotine scene, but the once-beloved, never-to-be James XXVI would go through a spell of rationing generic peanut butter and saltines and maybe I’d throw in bed bugs and gonorrhea out of spite. (Weren’t royals plagued with STDs? Why doesn’t that factor into the royal romance trope?) 

 

In general, I struggle with the romance genre because of the insistence in having a Happily Ever After. Of course, I root for protagonists. I want them to resolve the problems authors throw at them to keep us reading. However, I don’t ascribe to the rigid belief that finding everlasting love (or even a happy-for-now love scenario…hello, sequel) is the only way to have a happy ending. Romance novels continue to propagate a pervasive bias that being coupled makes life better. A person, real or fictionalized, can be happy, single or attached. 

 

Romance lovers say, Fine, sourpuss. Write your damned story, without princes or weddings or an ending with a couple kissing on a beach in Fiji. It’s just not a romance novel. And, hell no, I’m not going to touch it! VD is for Valentine’s Day, not venereal disease. 

 

Fair enough. Reading is often another form of escapism, but I wonder what harm it does. The romance book market remains robust and readers eagerly lap up one romance after another, happy-coupled ending after happy-coupled ending. Surely, it feeds into hopes and expectations of the same in readers’ actual lives. Where are the stories of triumph in going it alone or breaking free from a mismatched, perhaps even harmful relationship, ending not with the character jumping into another, seemingly healthier relationship, but finding comfort and confidence in going forward on their own, happily ever after or, at least, happy for now? We have a massively popular genre of literature that won’t even consider that as a viable option. 

 

Did I say I’m considering writing a gay romance? It’s a stretch, for sure. This post might make it seem doubtful, but I can do happy. I can get in the right frame of mind with a playlist that includes “Shiny Happy People” and this song but certainly not that song. I’ll leave out the bed bugs. No castles nor crowns either. If there’s a Prince, it’ll be the beagle. The closest I’ll get to charming is the brand-named toilet paper that leaves off the last letter. Maybe I’ll even publish under a gender-ambiguous first-name pseudonym like Pat or Jordan so no one is turned off knowing the M/M tale was penned by an actual dude. 

 

Look for my book on Amazon, at Barnes & Noble and on indie store shelves in 2026. If my title should indeed appear in any or all of those places, that will be my real-life happily ever after.

 

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[1] Male primogeniture, favoring younger sons over older sisters, wasn’t done away with for the British monarchy until The Succession to the Crown Act of 2013, the amendment applying to births after October 28, 2011, thereby keeping older cases of gender discrimination intact. Thus, Charles’ sister, Anne, born in 1950, is 16^th in line to the throne while her younger brothers Andrew (b. 1960) and Edward (b. 1964) are 8^th and 13^th, respectively. (Based on the “enlightened” 2013 act, Prince William’s daughter, Charlotte (b. 2015; 3rd), now falls between older brother, George (b. 2013; 2^nd) and younger brother, Louis (b. 2018; 4^th).) It’s not that Anne will ever have a shot at becoming queen but rather that her status is diminished due to gender, a practice perpetuated for centuries. Why would women romanticize royalty?