The Last Single Couple in America follows a gay man and his best friend, a straight woman, who both sleep with the same man, unknowingly causing their friendship to take a drastic turn. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

I thought it would be an interesting dynamic if two best friends unknowingly slept with the same person, especially if one was gay, and the other being his best straight female friend just added to the dramatic fallout of their friendship. It was tricky how I had to orchestrate them both sleeping with the same guy since they were so close and shared all the intimate details of their love/sex life. Hopefully, I pulled it off without seeming unrealistic. But throughout the novel, I basically let the characters dictate where the story was going, and fortunately, things just fell into place in a logical (hopefully) way.

Because Francine was absent throughout a good chunk of the middle of the novel, I didn’t want the reader to forget about Francine, so I would periodically interject how Jude missed her and wished they were talking so he could tell her about some of the crazy situations he experienced. Of course, I had — at some point — to reunite them and a death was the impetus to do just that because they both came to the conclusion that life is too short to let petty things come between friends.

Jude and Francine are well-crafted characters that readers will be drawn to and can relate to their emotional struggles. Were you able to achieve everything you wanted with the characters in the novel?

I feel that I did. In the beginning, Jude frets about turning 30. By the end of the novel, as he heads into the new year when he will turn 32, he realizes that age is just a number, and he doesn’t feel any different than when he was in his 20s.

As for Francine, she comes to realize it was foolish to let Dakota come between her deep friendship with Jude. She let her anger and emotions override reality. As they are celebrating New Year’s Eve, Jude optimistically moves on from his breakup with Chase, and Francine does the same with Douglas and Jude tells Francine how much he appreciates her and that you can’t rush love; it has to happen naturally. He will find a better version of Chase and Francine will find a better version of Douglas, but patience is needed. Until then, they will have each other and will support each other through the ups and downs of life. Time heals all wounds. I think it is a good lesson to learn for the reader.

What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?

Obviously, friendships and relationships were the major themes, but also family. I wanted to portray a positive relationship between a gay man and his family. Although it isn’t until the end of the novel that Jude tells his mother that he is gay, I wanted to present being gay as no different from being straight. When Francine asks Jude why he hasn’t told his parents, he says, “My brother didn’t have to tell them he’s straight. Being gay is who I am.”

Although I think of The Last Single Couple in America as a comic novel, it would be negligent to not include some of the social issues that faced gays in the 90s, so I had to include one character who has an AIDS scare and another character who is HIV positive, but that he was living a normal, happy, and healthy life.

What is the next book that you are working on, and when will it be available?

I’m toying with doing a sequel because I really liked the characters so much. But then I was thinking of doing a novel about a struggling actor and a struggling playwright who are thrown together by economic fates and start out at odds with each other, but an underlying attraction develops between them. We’ll see. I’ve spent a lot of time getting The Last Single Couple in America published and marketing it, but now I can spend more time thinking/writing a new novel.

Author Links: GoodReads | X | Facebook

Original source: https://literarytitan.com/2024/07/26/time-heals-all-wounds-2/