I recently revealed that my novel, Artifact of the Dawn, does include a gay romantic subplot. I thought I’d explain how that came to be.

When I originally conceived of the idea for Artifact of the Dawn, it sprang from a question that came to me – what if elves were actually aliens from another planet? Maybe the crashed onto a primitive world and somehow lost their technology over the centuries. From there I developed the world I was going to set the novel in, and then I started developing the characters in my novel. I chose to make my two protagonists, Ardyn and Jevan, male because I am more comfortable writing male characters. That’s not to say I have no female characters in my novel – I made sure to include several, and I wrote them all as strong, independent characters.

As I wrote the story, Ardyn and Jevan just seemed drawn to each other. They kept getting thrown together in all these dangerous situations, with only each other to rely on. At the very least, they formed a very close bond of friendship with each other. Yet, as I continued to write their story, there weren’t just the bonds of friendship forming. A deeper connection was starting to form between them and it sparked my idea for the subplot that developed.

I don’t want to reveal the entire subplot here but suffice it to say it has a sci-fi twist that I’m rather proud of, which brings Ardyn and Jevan even closer together.