I wanted to read about a couple whose conservative surroundings made their love seem all but impossible, but it blossomed anyway. (It turns out I had stumbled into my own happy ending despite the glaring lack of examples in popular media. That girl I met in college? Reader, I married her.) And after a fruitless search, I decided if I wanted to see that story, I had to write it. In late 2018, I wrote my first draft of what became Queerly Beloved. It’s a rom-com about Amy, a lesbian in Oklahoma who finds love while navigating heteronormativity and homophobia as a baker, bartender, and bridesmaid-for-hire. And because I wanted to highlight a time in queer history that seemed to be passed over in the literary world, I set Queerly Beloved in the mid-2010s, where Amy’s job in the wedding industry collides with nuanced conversations about same-sex marriage and the fight for queer liberation. And spoiler alert: Amy gets her happily ever after.
I’m lucky to be in fantastic company, as the LGBTQ+ romance and rom-com scene is full of phenomenal books this year.
