The literary genre of male-male romance is less gay than you think.
Sure, gay people have been loving the TV show Heated Rivalry, based on the hockey-themed Game Changer MM romance series by Canadian author Rachel Reid.
But rather than a category of romance written with gay male readers in mind, most MM romance is written by and for cis women, usually straight women. (Reid has not spoken publicly about her own orientation.) It’s a niche corner of the larger romance novel genre that mostly consumed by women, which makes the success of Heated Rivalry less surprising. Perhaps it helps women explore queerness. Maybe it offers a way to escape some of the sexist tropes that drive mainstream romance fiction. We’re not exactly sure.
Yet there are, indeed, gay male writers in the industry, writers who have first-hand knowledge of the dynamics of male-male relationships and more importantly, the mechanics of what goes where in an overheated man-on-man encounter. Australia’s Casey Cox is one of them. He’s written more than 40 MM romance books, including series about veterinarians, daddies and mountain men.
Pink Ticket Travel asked Cox what makes for a great location for romance, how he writes his sex scenes and why the small towns in his books are full of gorgeous, out gay men.
First off, when did you start writing MM romance fiction?
It was basically brought on by the pandemic. In 2020 I was turning 40. My partner and a few of our friends were also turning 40. We were all hyped for 2020 and were going to do all these amazing things. Instead, when the pandemic hit, I was working really long days and nights and weekends, and not really enjoying it. With the whole world ending, I thought: Why not do the thing I’ve wanted to do my whole life but never have? So I quit my corporate job and dove into researching how to publish a book. I stumbled upon MM romance purely by accident. I had gotten a Kindle some time earlier, and a book popped up on the store with two guys on the cover and I thought, I’ve never seen this before. I said to myself that if I was going to write something, why not what I know?
But I quickly realized that romance is its own special genre with specific tropes and expectations. It’s not gay fiction, it’s gay romance. There’s a very big distinction. You always have two or more people and something brings them together. They go through a series of ups and downs that can be anything from very light romcom to dark fantasy or anything in between. There has to be a happily-ever-after. At the start I was thinking of portraying gay experiences in a realistic way, but romance is a different approach to reality. You’re glossing over certain elements to focus on the emotional connection, the emotional journey of the characters. My style tends to be more on the light and fluffier side, not super angsty. Like Gilmore Girls, fast-paced, dialogue driven.
What does it take to write a good sex scene?
A lot of coffee. A lot of mental preparation. I really do not enjoy writing them, because they’re hard from a technical standpoint. You’ve got where the sex scene fits within the broader story. Then you’ve got the emotional stuff. Then you’ve obviously got the physical description of what’s going on. I end up liking my characters as I’m writing them, and the sex scenes usually come from the midpoint onwards, so it almost feels like friends or people that you know that you’re writing a very explicit sex scene about, detailing their bodies, their reactions. But readers love it, and there’s a high and healthy demand for that.
What makes for a romantic location?
I have a series that I wrote during the pandemic, because we couldn’t travel. It was set at a luxury all-male clothing-optional resort. I set it in Florida, because there are a couple of hotels there that fit that vibe. Having a location like that is itself an emotional experience. If you set a book somewhere coastal, where it’s warm and beachy, it creates a vibe that’s exciting, cool. A reader in Scotland in the middle of winter, when it’s minus-20 out and you just hate everything, can be transported into that world.
A clothing-optional resort certainly brings in a lot of temptation and opportunities for different couplings and interactions.
Exactly. There are guests, there are staff. There’s the fact you’re on a holiday, which immediately puts people into a different headspace. I set it in Florida thinking of Wilton Manors and similar places in the U.S. that seemed, to me, being an Aussie, so progressive. But Florida as a whole has not lived up to what I thought it was.
What other types of places are great for a gay romance?
I do really like an American small town. Not being American, I always make sure that I create a fictional American small town, so that I am not held to account for any sort of discrepancies that exist between what I write and what is real. Of course, the ways in which small towns are depicted in fiction, especially romance, are always different. In a real small town, you might be the only gay or one of only two gays in the village. But in romance, especially MM romance, you’ve got all these things people love about small towns—the diner, the old store, the people meddling—but it’s also progressive and there are lots of gay people. There might even be a gay bar, though it wouldn’t be economically feasible. It’s a bit of a utopia.
Have you even been to the U.S.?
A couple of times. San Francisco to Los Angeles. Tucson, Arizona. Very limited.
What setting in one of your books is farthest away from your own experiences?
Draxl: Apocalyptic Himbos. That’s because it’s this dystopian sci-fi book set in the future.
What are your favourite Australian locations?
Nothing Special, which is a best-friends-to-lovers love story, is set in my hometown of Brisbane. I got to showcase things that people who have never been here would like, but also things that people who live here might not know about. To have that in-depth knowledge and the confidence to be able to execute something like that was a lot of fun.
Why not set every novel in Brisbane?
I think Australia, for a lot of readers, especially U.S. readers, is such an exotic concept, and it comes with so many tropes built in around how we are, how we talk, the style of life here. I think it’s good for some stories, and I enjoy doing it from time to time. But readers generally prefer what they’re familiar with, and everyone, from Australia to Europe to Africa to South America, has an idea of an American small town because of popular culture. Hollywood, The Simpsons, Friends. When people think “small town,” they don’t think of a hamlet in Germany.
I guess if you set a book in Canada, you are stuck with Mounties and lumberjacks and maple syrup… and maybe hockey players. A book set in the U.K. has to have royals and class distinctions.
Yeah. I just saw Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale, which is just so quintessentially British. They’re just so much better at language. I love British writing, but my writing isn’t that elevated and I don’t know if it’s the right setting for a book or series for me.
Your characters are from a lot of places. Have you travelled much yourself?
When I turned 18, I did what a lot of Aussies do: I took a gap year in the U.K. We get some jobs, use it as a jumping off point to visit the rest of Europe, and then we come back after a year to go to uni. I ended up staying in Europe for five years because I met somebody there. I’ve got Polish heritage, and I ended up living in Sweden and the Netherlands. This was between 1999 and 2004. Mobile phones weren’t around, selfies weren’t a thing. I’d call Mum once a week on a phone card from a public phone, where the credit would go down to zero in just two minutes. We were immersing ourselves in the culture without even realizing we were doing it, because we had no other choice.
When I was in my early 20s, I didn’t want to have more stuff than I could fit into my biggest suitcase. I’m in my 40s now, and I have a house and stuff that couldn’t fit into a suitcase anymore. My last big trip was to Bali in late 2019. I think Bali is for Aussies what Mexico is to Americans: a convenient travel place, not too far, cheaper, a different culture, great weather. We stayed just outside Ubud in this lush rainforest with rice fields everywhere.
I don’t dig too much into my travel memories for ideas. I tend not to bring myself and my personal experiences into the books. It’s all just my imagination.
As a gay man, do you bring something to MM romance that non-gay writers don’t?
Sometimes I think that female readers might feel a bit more comfortable knowing that the book was written by another female, which I understand. I’ve never hidden that I’m a guy, but Casey is a name that can go either way, which is one of the reasons why I chose it. I think some of your readers might roll their eyes at MM romance, thinking it’s just erotica, smut. There’s nothing wrong with erotica and smut, but it’s a separate genre. There are a lot of self-published gay male authors if you’re okay with a bit of spicy stuff.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
