I love this time of year, don't you?
I've always been a big kid when it came to Christmas, but I have to admit, until the last few years, I never realized that people brought out stories too.
And what a wealth of stories! There are angels, grumpy mall Santas, soldiers, dancers, elves... you name it, there's a book out there that covers it.
My first Christmas story was Connections, a tale of two men on a train, going to the same college reunion - and both facing up to a massive dose of unrequited love.
Saving Jason wasn't your average Christmas tale - it centred around the homeless in NYC, I recall asking my Facebook friends for Christmas-y things to do in NYC - lots of them found their way into the story.
And then last year, I had the idea for A Christmas Promise, a story of a man who finds a beaten up stranger left in the snow - and that's when things get weird.
The story finished in time for Christmas, but there were one or two loose ends - namely, the bad guys. Of course, I got the messages demanding to know if they got what was coming to them, and why didn't I finish the story later?
Because in real life, it could have been six months to a year before they got to trial. Plus, I'd set the story in Wyoming, where there is no hate crime legislature. The story needed to end at Christmas. And then...

Yeah, you know what happened, don't you?
I had an idea. Why not write a sequel?
Show what happened to the bad guys, show how Micah and Greg got on with their lives... and something was tugging at me.
Joshua, Micah's dad, who'd played such an integral role in the story. Joshua, in his late forties, a widower, whose first love had been a boy - and who he'd lost when their families separated them. Joshua, who'd been happily married for over twenty years... what if he found love again?
That was it. I had my Christmas story for 2018. The Law of Miracles. And again, it wasn't your average Christmas tale.
What made it different?
My main characters were both mature men, forty-seven and fifty years old. Men who knew what it was to love someone and lose them. Men who were wary of making mistakes. And the key word in all that is... mature.
How many gay romances can you name, off the top of your head, where the MCs are men of that age? Not many, right? Now, why is that?
We love our young, bright, gorgeous, fit guys of twenty-something. We love our covers revealing bare chests and lean torsos, handsome, young faces...
While I was writing that book, I was conscious of one really important thing. I wanted the men to be true to their age. I didn't want them to act like schoolboys. And I think I did that. Some of the reviewers are commenting on just that.

"Absolutely wonderful story!! It’s so incredible to read a MM story with mature MCs that ACT and TALK like mature men and not like teenagers. The situations and issues were also very spot on for mature characters."

But here's the thing. Mature men on a book cover? In the story? Are not everyone's cup of tea, as we say over here in the UK. Like I said, we like our gorgeous, young, fit men.

So this year, be different. Take a chance. Read a story about mature guys finding love. And if you like hot scenes, yeah, you'll find those in there too. (I couldn't keep these two apart :P )
And I know I'm not the only one who's writing these characters. Devon McCormack, Felice Stevens, Christina Lee...

For 2018, take a chance on second-chance - or even third-chance - love, and lose yourself in a story for the season...