I’m a stickler for realism in my books. That means that if a character goes to a certain restaurant in a certain city and orders a certain dish and it tastes a certain way, you can retrace that character’s steps and eat that same dish in that same restaurant and it will taste the way I said it would. That also means that when Doctor Lehman in The Mechanic and the Surgeon talks about advances in prosthetic cartilege, it’s the real deal he’s discussing, and the secretive lovers in Swing State hide away in a run-down hotel in Jupiter, Florida, that hotel is really there, and it really does smell like saltwater and mildew. Fortunately, I’ve traveled, experienced, and read enough in my previous careers that I have a mental encyclopedia to pull from.

But what happens when realism just won’t fit the story? That’s happened to me twice.

The first time that happened was in Swing state, where our dear lovers walk from the hotel to the beach, crossing a bridge in the process. The problem is, in the real world, that bridge is a few miles away from their hotel, so they would’ve had to wlak a few miles to the bridge, then walk back down a few miles, then repeat to get back to the hotel. I expected some clever South Floridian reader to hold me over the coals for that one. But actually, either no one noticed, or no one cared enough to mention it in a review or an email or a blog post. I felt as if I’d dodged a bullet; I was still getting used to the idea of being able to take liberties with fiction.

When I was planning writing Swimming To Cuba, I had a very specific criminal enterprise in mind: a Cigarette-style speedboat smuggling cars from the Florida Keys to Cuba. The Cigarette boats smuggling people from Cuba to the Keys, or drugs from the Keys to Cuba, are common knowledge. But I’d read about the huge prices that used cars bring in Cuba — because, until recently, private car importation and ownership were illegal — and I loved the idea of smugglers (gay smugglers, lonely gay smugglers, of course) carrying cars on these fast Cigarette boats, and one of those boats then flipping over and causing mayhem in the smugglers’ relationship.

I consulted a friend who’s a retired Merchant Marine captain. I consulted another friend who’s in the car shipping business. I even posted on an online forum for Cigarette boat enthusiasts. And the response was universal: that boat is going to sink or tip over within minutes of you putting a two-ton luxury car in the back of it. There were boats up to the task, of course, but they wouldn’t fit my desired scenario of a sexy fast Cigarette boat (fellow South Floridians, what’s up) doing the smuggling.

And when I published the book, I considered including a disclaimer in the back that this sort of smuggling actually wouldn’t work, but then I decided that would ruin the fun and the suspension of disbelief. So I published it with the Cigarette boat and without a disclaimer. And while I expected some reader to call me out on it, nobody did. Well, maybe now you can.

But my point in writing this is not to invite readers to fact-check me, but to remind my fellow writers that the characters and the story and the love are at the core of what we’re doing here, and it doesn’t matter if not all the technical details check out. We can make a parallel here to “soft” and “hard” science fiction, and I assure you that romance is “soft” in any regard. Go out and write it even if you don’t know the technical details. I’ve often heard of writers who are starting out giving themselves a flunking grade and quitting writing because they felt inadequate in their knowledge of some arcane (or not so arcane) bit of subject matter. My response is: don’t worry about it. Worry about stories of people and the heart, and let the details and locations fade into the background, or just invent them completely.

There’s value to realism. Happy readers have emailed me, delighted to have read an accurate description of their favorite street or coffeeshop or beach in one of my books. Other readers have said they enjoy knowing that they’re often learning something about the world when reading my books: indeed, I used to be in academia, and I still have an impulse to teach that maybe I can never get rid of. But even given those upsides, the love is always more important than the setting or the technical details.

Write it with feeling. Read it for the feeling. That’s what romance is all about.

Steve has no interest in his high school reunion, until he remembers the one person who mattered to him back then: Mr. P, his senior-year English teacher. High school was rough for Steve, but Mr. P’s class was an oasis. Listening to Mr. P had sent Steve to pursue writing, and staring at Mr. P’s gorgeous face every morning made Steve come to terms with being gay.

Twenty years after graduation, Steve is decidedly single in Key West, but he can’t stop daydreaming about Mr. P — and sneaking into his upcoming high school reunion is his chance to make daydreams into reality.

“Maybe I’m ready for this now.”

David just got back into teaching after a long break. It wasn’t easy being outed to his wife and his students. After being shamed and fired from teaching, he tried living a new life in New York, but he wanted to get back to Florida and back to being a prep school English teacher.

Suddenly meeting his former student is a jolt back to David’s first days as a teacher, but can that former student be his future?

High School Reunion is a standalone second-chances gay romance with a feel-good HEA, a grumpy writer, a grumpier cat, literary discussions, old country music, Cuban coffee, and love hotter than the Key West sun.

Buy Link:

Amazon

Steve Milton writes gay romances with sweet love, good humor, and hot sex. His stories tend toward the sweet and sexy, with not much angst and definitely no downers. Steve crafts feel-good stories with complex characters and interesting settings. He is a South Florida native, and when he’s not writing, he likes cats, cars, music, and coffee.