Hello, my name is…

Introductory posts always feel a little like stepping up to a microphone in an empty room, and asking if it’s on. So here, I’ll have a go.

I’m William L. Roberts; I write modern gay romances, sometimes with a paranormal aspect to them. I’ve lived in the Pacific Northwest for a decade now, after attending university in Montréal and growing up in Minnesota. Along the way, I’ve spent a significant amount of time in the Southwest, particularly around Albuquerque, and I developed a distinct taste for Hatch chiles.

From a childhood surrounded by literature and immersed in science fiction, fantasy, and plenty else aside, I developed a relatively omnivorous interest in literature. More recently, I overcame some sort of internalized distaste and tried reading romance; I was surprised at the extent to which I liked the genre–I’d carried around this concept of it for years, for nothing.

Well, after devouring a few series and getting a feel for the genre, I realized… I wanted to tell some of these stories, too. I’d taken part in NaNoWriMo in years past, but usually found that a project would peter out somewhere in the 15-20k word range. I realized, I actually needed to have a story in mind that I could believe in, through its natural conclusion. So I set it aside, and played with smaller stories for the time being. Maybe an embellished retelling here or there.

The project I’ve got right now―in revisions at this moment―is the first story I’ve found I could believe in throughout the entire telling of it. These guys moved me pretty significantly while I wrote, and reminisced about my own travels.