A Life in the Day

Photo by Papaioannou Kostas on Unsplash I'm a sucker for friendship stories. If a book has a strong, core friendship that lasts throughout the story, it's a good chance you've hooked me as a reader. Some of my favorite stories are adventure stories where a group of friends help each other achieve an impossible feat or where the main character defeats their nemesis with the help of their friends . Photo by Aman Shrivastava on Unsplash But while good friendships make for good stories, we don't encourage male friendships to thrive beyond childhood, and we don't encourage physical affection between them to extend beyond puberty. We tend to sexualize their bonds instead, creating rifts and establishing an environment of toxic masculinity . We tell our boys to be boys, to stop crying, to stop feeling or showing emotion after they reach a certain age (an age arbitrarily chosen by parents or the community they're raised in, by the way). We teach our boys ...

My kids during gender-swap day at school I'm an advocate of love. A champion for its cause. A passionate believer in the happily ever after. Gender has never played a factor in how I perceive love and if my children are anything to go by, they feel the same way. Love is love. If you've followed my blog or read through the posts (welcome new readers) you've undoubtedly noticed that I represent a lot of GLBTQ romance. These "Gay Romance" authors have works in various subgenres, featuring a myriad of gender-pairings but at the core of each of their books is love. It's all about the love! When I'm passionate about something, everyone knows about it. Ask any of my clients and they'll tell you how passionate I can be when discussing any of their works, their careers, my family, coffee, the publishing industry and Harry Potter. Get me talking about any of these topics and you'll not hear an intake of breath for several minutes. But I don...