Colin and Josh feel Love’s Magic!

I’ve been writing gay romance since I was twelve years old, only back then it wasn’t called ‘gay romance’. In fact, it had no name at all. It was the fifty’s, and it was worth your life to admit to being gay, let alone confess to being a girl who constantly fantasized about relationships between gay men. Hell, I didn’t even know what a homosexual was. I lived on a farm out in the sticks in a tiny Michigan village and I’d never, to my knowledge, even heard the word. I just knew I loved the thought of boy on boy romance. I just knew that there was something hot going on between Tom Corbett and his Space Cadets and all those guys on ‘Combat’.

Naïve as I was, I still recognized that I’d better not say anything to anyone about my weird-ass proclivities. And I didn’t. For many, many years I scribbled out my ‘gay romance’ fantasies then immediately ripped them up. For many, many years. I believed there had to be something wrong with me to be so obsessively fascinated by the idea of men loving men.

Fast forward to 1999 and the dawning of the Internet. I still hadn’t shared my love for gay romance with another living soul, and I remained convinced that there had to be something wrong with me because of my passion for gay love. I knew no one else, at that time, who shared my passion for gay passion.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered Kirk/Spock slash! I had, of course, known there was a passionate romantic link between those two. Who didn’t? But discovering the slash community, beginning with the Kirk/Spock fandom, was like a lightning strike to my mind and heart. My god! There were other women who felt as I did! And not only were they were actively writing the kind of stories I’d been ripping up for years, they were admired for doing so!

For the next twenty years I wrote slash fanfiction, mainly in the ‘Lord of the Rings’ fandom. Overall, I wrote over 337 stories, some as short as 100 words (a drabble) some as long as a series which was over 119,012 words. I enjoy writing my stories. I enjoyed the feedback I received from my readers. It was a creative release I’d been searching for my entire life and I blessed the Internet for leading me to this artistic oasis for my spirit.

But after a while it just wasn’t enough. Writing stories about other people’s characters begin to grow tiresome and repetitive. My first book, Love’s Legacy, began as an AU fanfiction story. I wrote my fandom characters in an alternative universe simply to try to extend my reach. But it fell flat.

Love’s Legacy is the story of how David Gardener and Nate Reese met and fell in love. I actually went so far as to publish it on Amazon. But it just wasn’t good enough, and eventually I withdrew the book from publication. I was still writing fanfiction and it showed. I was writing with someone else’s voice.

Love’s Magic was my very first step into writing my own characters. David and Nate are still there but they are now fully realized individuals rather than existing as a reflection of someone else’s thoughts. Colin and Josh sprang from my brain like a fiery eruption and immediately captivated my soul. Of all my characters, those two are the ones who most completely reflect my ability to step forth as a creative author, freed from any ties to the work of another.

I will always be grateful the slash fanfiction community for nurturing the budding author until she was ready to blossom into a fully realized novelist. It’s been an amazing thing to watch the gay community’s growth over these past twenty years. My own journey has echoed theirs in many ways, and I’m grateful to all those gay activists who fought to give the gay community the rights and privileges they always deserved.

And I’m grateful to the gay romance community, readers, authors, publishers and promoters, who are making these, my retirement years, the most creative ones of my life.

I hope you’ll read Love’s Magic. I hope you’ll meet David and Nate… Colin and Joshua. These dynamic, sexy, and totally adorable men carried me into a whole new world of love, romance, joy, and happily-ever-after’s. I hope they’ll do the same for you.

Reach me at: jjarrell@lovesmagic.online
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