About me

Growing up, queer representation in media was always one of two things: Coming out stories or tragic stories centered around homophobia. While both of those types of stories are very important, neither ever resonated with me as a queer person.

I was 20-something before I read a story where the characters were just queer. The story wasn’t ABOUT them being queer. The characters just happened to be queer while fighting for their lives and dealing with fantasy chaos.

I had never read a story like that before and instantly I knew that that was what I had always been looking for.

Reading that story lit a fire in my soul and set my author dreams ablaze again. I never thought I would get a story idea good enough to be an author but now that I knew that QUEER ROMANCE was on the table, my passion resurfaced, and I knew exactly what I wanted to write.

I always wanted my media to contain queer characters who were the heroes of their own stories. Queer characters that were allowed to have epic and intricate struggles and quests like any other characters without the focus of the story being on their sexuality.⁠ ⁠

So that's the type of story I wrote. The overarching conflict is the fragile peace between two nations, but my main character happens to be gay and the central romance is a gay love story that plays out in the middle of an international crisis.⁠⁠

When I read and write I want escapism, and I don't need homophobia to create conflict in my fiction. If I can dream up a world with fictional cultures and places and people, I can dream up a world where people aren't condemned for their sexuality.

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The story takes place in a fantasy world with made-up places but the stakes and tension come from all the things that can go wrong when humans - who are just humans - are corrupted by greed and power and prejudice.⁠ ⁠I didn't want to set the story in actual historical times, because I didn't want to be limited by how the history of our world played out. I wanted characters who are leaders and politicians and warriors regardless of gender and I wanted queer characters where the story didn’t revolve around them not being allowed to be queer.⁠

The setting for my novel, As We Fall, is a fantasy world inspired by ancient Rome. I’ve done a LOT of research on Roman history to get the ambience and general feel right, but I have in no way aimed for historical accuracy. This is such an incredibly fun setting to write and creating the key locations for where all the major events go down was such a thrill.⁠

I’ve always loved stories about characters struggling in the shadow of grand backdrops and huge stakes like Lord of the Rings, Howl’s Moving Castle, Final Fantasy XII, Gladiator, Crisis Core, etc. Stories where the characters are just tiny pieces of the puzzle while much bigger things plays out.

I had the inkling of the idea for the story a few years back when I visited Rome. It was the night before we had to go back home and I couldn't sleep. I lay awake for hours, thinking about all the amazing places we had seen while we were there and fragments of characters and scenes formed in my head.

Head to my stories today to see a lot of images that inspire the setting of the world

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The heart of As We Fall is essentially a romance but I went in with a super specific approach to exactly what I wanted it to be.

I wanted a queer love story where the complication wasn’t that the characters were queer.

I wanted it to be a complicated love story that plays out over multiple books but where none of the plot points are based on misunderstandings, miscommunication, or nonsensical interactions – and I wanted this complication to be inherent to the characters in a way that would make it difficult for them to ’just’ overcome and fall in love.

I wanted it to be a gay romance where none of the tension came from them not being able to accept the queer part of themselves or each other.

I wanted the novel to contain graphic sex-scenes that didn’t feel gratuitous or exploitative. I wanted the explicit scenes to be absolutely necessary for the plot and for character development. So often, queer media is considered sexual just for being queer while graphic sex-scenes (which are often fine and plentiful in straight media) are considered ”too much”.

Most of all, I wanted to write the kind of love story that would touch my own heart. I wanted to write a romance that would move me and keep me awake at night, and I think, here at the precipise, that I might’ve actually succeeded.

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