Existing While Queer—during the Holidays

No Angst, thanks!

Being queer during the holidays can be tough, even when you dive into some escapist reading given how often we’re just kind of not-there. I admit to being a lover of the cheesy, low-budget, plot-holes-you-can-drive-Santa’s-sled-through holiday movies, and I happily sip my tea and snuggle under my blankie knowing that the silver-haired older gentleman is totally going to turn out to be Santa for-real and save the bakery/Christmas tree farm/family inn/vineyard. Sometimes you want a sugar cookie, okay?

But I also wish I could have that, but queer. There are some out there. I loved The Christmas Set-up, and Single All the Way, and both especially because they went low-angst, like the typical holiday formula, but let them be gloriously queer. (Especially The Christmas Set-up, which also included some wonderful queers-existing-in-history).

If you’re looking for some reading that gives those vibes? Check out the more than fifty titles waiting for you in the Low-Angst Queer Holiday Reads promotion, either by clicking the image above, or that link right there. Chances are you’ve read my stuff if you’re seeing this here, of course, but there are over fifty titles! (I’m on my third so far, and I’m really having fun with them).

And if you’d like some more thoughts on the whole existing while queer during the holidays thing? Keep reading…

Seriously, more #WritersCoffeeClub, ‘Nathan?

Okay, I swear I’m not doing this on purpose, but over on Mastodon, there’s this series of daily question prompts, #WritersCoffeeClub, and today’s prompt was: What aspects of your life do you bring into your writing? This struck me as another awesome discussion topic, as my answer was pretty simple (on the surface): Existing while queer, mostly.

To build on that theme (and also because of said group promotion I’m taking part in), let’s go back to Handmade Holidays and Faux Ho Ho first before I move on to today’s holiday novella. In Handmade Holidays, Nick is disowned at the start of the story. His family sucks. He finds a new chosen family, has awesome friends, and by the end of that novella he’s super happy—and his biological family never show up again, never come around, and had nothing to do with his happiness. This was a super-important facet of the book for me when I was writing it, because that’s the lived reality of a tonne of queer people I know (myself included). In Faux Ho Ho, Silas’s family is pretty awful, but he loves and is loved by his sister, has some people at his back even when he’s with his family, and going home for the holidays is like wearing an itchy, uncomfortable and undersized sweater that reminds him he’s grown and isn’t who he used to be. That’s another lived reality for so many of my queer friends who have surface-level, kinda-sorta “tolerant” families, and end up holding out because there are some relationships they still want to maintain with some of their family.

In Felix Navidad, I wanted to explore another facet of existing while queer, and that was how queer generations don’t have an inherent inheritability to them. For the vast majority of us queer people, we don’t have queer parents who can tell us about our queer grandparents. We’re usually the only one. (Not always, of course—my husband’s older sister came out before him, which was incredible for him, and I have a few queer friends with children who have queer kids of their own, which I can only imagine how fantastic that must be as a queerling). But most of us don’t know who came before us unless we go seek it out, and we don’t even know what we don’t know. Felix interacting with Danya was all about that, a queer caretaker looking after a queer man many decades older than him, and their interactions among the queer community at large underlining how important that connection is.

I mean, he also gets stranded in a cabin with a hot farmer, but adding these doses of my lived queer reality is important to me, even when non-queer people sometimes complain about it.

Felix Navidad, which is part of the Low-Angst Queer Holiday Reads promo right now!

Felix doesn’t do impulsive anymore. But attending a friend’s wedding reminds Felix he’s the only one of his friends attending solo, and recent losses have him thinking he’s swung too far in the not-impulsive direction.

So, impulse decision number one? Cutting in on a dance with handsome farmer Kevin, the ex of one of the grooms, for a spin at the reception. Impulse decision number two? Planning his first holiday vacation off work. Christmas in Hawai’i will be a gift to himself.

When dancing doesn’t work out, Felix keeps high hopes for his vacation right up until the first flight cancellation. After bumping into a stranded Kevin, who lost his flight home, Felix gives impulse a third try: Why not drive to Toronto together? But after ice rain strands them halfway, it looks like Felix isn’t going to get to give himself his gift after all. Instead, this Christmas is a small cabin—and Kevin.

“Felix Navidad,” by ‘Nathan Burgoine