Asking because a few years ago I wrote a novel (my only one so far) that features a gay romance subplot in the last third. Which doesn't even get past the stage of cuddling.
(The reason it happens that way is because a whole other pairing was planned initially. Things didn't work out, and I got stuck, until an early beta reader pointed out that something was happening between these other two characters.)
(Yeah, yeah, I know. Might as well also advertise it as a vampire story simply because it happens to feature vampires extensively, even though it's not the main focus.)
Come to think of it, a trio of novelettes I wrote for a shared setting a few years before could be said in retrospect to be about the love story between a human and an AI. One that can't become physical, because reasons, and so remains purely romantic. Moreover, it's not even very explicit until the third part. Does that disqualify it?
In case you haven't noticed the trend, I'm pretty bad at noticing the way my own characters are looking at each other. (Don't ask about my love life.) And in most stories I'd rather not even go there, not least because, as I posted recently elsewhere:
It's 2018. There's no shortage of gay "romance" fiction where the protagonists shag each other silly, but not much else. We need more stories of men being sweet and gentle to each other, intimate not in bed, but in the sense of sharing secrets, and tears.
And yeah. I just recommended a book written along those lines earlier today. What can I say.
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kalldoro
