Taylor Swift, Giveaways, and A Fall of Light
In just under a month (Sept. 4) I’ll be releasing my fifth novel, A Fall of Light. It’s a lovely M/M romance, featuring all the good stuff we romance readers want: Big Feelings, Big Conflicts, Big Endings. And starting today…BIG GIVEAWAYS! Right here on Goodreads, you can enter for a chance to win a free copy – and who doesn’t love free?
I could not be more excited to release it, or to finally give a happily-ever-after to a character, Greg Van de Meer, who has been unfinished business for me since 2016. Greg was sketched out as a small but pivotal character in Sound Effects and then essentially left, in love (secretly) with a man he couldn’t have because that man was a) straight, and b) in a happily-ever-after situation with his own lady love. (Perhaps this is a good time to note that A Fall of Light is a standalone and you need not have read any of the Effects series in order to enjoy it.) Nonetheless, it’s the worst of all worlds for a romance writer to create a beloved character and then just leave the poor guy without hope of his own HEA.
And that’s where Taylor Swift comes in. If you know the album, Folklore, you’ll know the song, “right where you left me,” a lovely ballad about having your heart broken and not being able to move on. It’s fair to say I was obsessed with that album for a while and every time that song came on, I thought of Greg Van de Meer, waiting patiently, with dust settling in his overly thick, unruly hair, for me to come back and finish his arc. So I guess you could say Taylor Swift made me do this.
The truth is, I wanted to write his story for a long time, but the idea never went far because, though he is bisexual, I always felt that his happily-ever-after would be with a man, and, candidly, I didn’t see myself as the right teller for that story. My fear was that as much as I might want to elevate his journey from a side story to the main story, there were things about his life that I will never understand, could never understand—that even if I were able to tell it perfectly, I simply may not be the right mouthpiece. It’s scary to write these days. Nonetheless, his was a story I felt compelled to write for a bunch of very loving reasons.
But I will also say this: any time we step outside our own experiences to write characters or stories that differ from what we know firsthand, we have a solemn obligation to do everything possible to get it right – to tell stories fairly and accurately, to not advance stereotypes, to avoid casual racism or gender norms or misogyny or anything else that can be hurtful. Because words do matter.
A Fall of Light is a Taylor Swift-inspired, free-for-a-hundred-people, contemporary M/M romance out Sept. 4 and I’d be honored to have you read it.
xo
I could not be more excited to release it, or to finally give a happily-ever-after to a character, Greg Van de Meer, who has been unfinished business for me since 2016. Greg was sketched out as a small but pivotal character in Sound Effects and then essentially left, in love (secretly) with a man he couldn’t have because that man was a) straight, and b) in a happily-ever-after situation with his own lady love. (Perhaps this is a good time to note that A Fall of Light is a standalone and you need not have read any of the Effects series in order to enjoy it.) Nonetheless, it’s the worst of all worlds for a romance writer to create a beloved character and then just leave the poor guy without hope of his own HEA.
And that’s where Taylor Swift comes in. If you know the album, Folklore, you’ll know the song, “right where you left me,” a lovely ballad about having your heart broken and not being able to move on. It’s fair to say I was obsessed with that album for a while and every time that song came on, I thought of Greg Van de Meer, waiting patiently, with dust settling in his overly thick, unruly hair, for me to come back and finish his arc. So I guess you could say Taylor Swift made me do this.
The truth is, I wanted to write his story for a long time, but the idea never went far because, though he is bisexual, I always felt that his happily-ever-after would be with a man, and, candidly, I didn’t see myself as the right teller for that story. My fear was that as much as I might want to elevate his journey from a side story to the main story, there were things about his life that I will never understand, could never understand—that even if I were able to tell it perfectly, I simply may not be the right mouthpiece. It’s scary to write these days. Nonetheless, his was a story I felt compelled to write for a bunch of very loving reasons.
But I will also say this: any time we step outside our own experiences to write characters or stories that differ from what we know firsthand, we have a solemn obligation to do everything possible to get it right – to tell stories fairly and accurately, to not advance stereotypes, to avoid casual racism or gender norms or misogyny or anything else that can be hurtful. Because words do matter.
A Fall of Light is a Taylor Swift-inspired, free-for-a-hundred-people, contemporary M/M romance out Sept. 4 and I’d be honored to have you read it.
xo
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