When I made my first Facebook ads for my Gilded Age MM series, The Slippery Slope, I used the tagline, “Romance in the Gay Club Scene of the 1890s!”. And almost immediately, I had someone comment saying “Are you kidding? Or do you mean the 1980s?” Fortunately, I was able to reply and say, “It’s not a typo! There was a thriving gay club scene in The Bowery in the 1890s and earlier.” And guys, there was! The neighborhood of Bowery was famous for being a little slice of New York City where all the rules were broken and where men and women of all inclinations could live as their most authentic selves. It was so famous for the wild lives people lived that “going slumming” by visiting the Bowery clubs was considered to be one of the not-to-be-missed tourist attractions of New York before the twentieth century. The idea of social clubs and bars wasn’t new to the twentieth century. Neither was the concept of dance halls or public houses of ill-repute. By the end of the nineteenth century in large cities around the world, that hangout spot where everybody knew your name and was always glad you came…

I would be willing to bet that everything you think you know about queer history is wrong. Actually, I would be willing to bet that you were never taught queer history to begin with, especially not in school. So how is it possible that there is an entire, emerging and thriving sub-genre of Historical Romance about a part of History that never existed? Because love has always been love, no matter what a small handful of historians writing in the mid-20th-century might have wanted people to believe. What’s this? Historians are biased in the way they interpret and report History? They’ve swept a bunch of details under the carpet to advance a particular narrative that denigrates an entire demographic? No! Say it ain’t so! In fact, it’s true. The notion that, prior to the Stonewall Riots of 1969, all gay men were closeted, ashamed of themselves, isolated, and that they would be instantly put to death if they came out is a deliberate distortion, sold to the public by people with an agenda. The truth is that homosexuality in all its forms has been much more widely accepted throughout history than most of us were taught. Actual, academic historians like…

Romance readers are often accused of giving in to escapism.  You’ve heard those critics, the ones you want to roll your eyes at.  They don’t get it.  They seem to think that escapism is a bad thing!  In fact, reading a Romance set in a place or even a time far, far away from your own is the next best thing to taking a long trip and immersing yourself in a different culture. I first started reading Romance in high school, when I was definitely trapped in one spot.  My daily fantasies of running away from the mean girls and indifferent boys, hopping a ship, and going to England, where I would hide in the countryside until a handsome aristocrat noticed me met their imaginative match in romantic stories of Regency pirates.  The freedom that I found in reading about pirates (the ultimate gateway drug to the world of alpha heroes and feisty heroines) carried me through a difficult time in my life.  It also peeked my curiosity about the times and places I was reading about. Traveling the world is a prospect that most of us can only dream about, but just because we might not ever be able…