Hi Ben,
Hannah Hargrave told me you’d be fine with me coming direct, so here I am… three pieces in and you haven’t blocked me yet, which I’m choosing to read as encouragement.
I’ve a new novel out with Spring Street Books in June – Lisa Doyle is Absolutely Fine, a Manchester-set romcom about a woman who invents a fiancé rather than show up single to her best friend’s hen weekend. It’s only thanks to her GBFF that the plan doesn’t go face down in the nearest gutter from day one.
The book has thrown up two angles I think QX readers might enjoy – either at around 800 words.
1. “I’m Fine”: The Queer Survival Language Hiding in Plain Sight
The novel’s title is Lisa Doyle is Absolutely Fine. She isn’t – and nobody who says they are ever is. But “I’m fine” is also the script gay men of my generation learned before we knew what we were learning. It got us through Sunday dinners, school corridors, office Christmas parties, the phone call from mum. Pride 2026 doesn’t feel especially fine either. I’d write about the cost of fluency in a language we should never have had to learn, and what happens when you finally stop speaking it. Personal, with a bite. Picks up the rainbows-welded-onto-logos thread from last June’s listicle.
2. Writing Lisa, Twice: What Changed When I Rewrote My Debut as a Different Man
Lisa Doyle is a 2026 re-imagining of my 2010 debut, The Armchair Bride. The gay man who wrote it the first time was pre-marriage, pre-burying both parents, pre-Russell-T-Davies’s “wave of hostility” warning, pre-most things. Sixteen years of queer middle age change what gets kept and what goes. A behind-the-book piece that doesn’t bore because the framing is queer time, not author trivia.
I can have a draft over to you by Friday 22 May – earlier if it helps you slot around launch week. If neither lands, say so and I’ll dig out something else. I’m also a panellist at Nottingham’s Queer the Shelves (late June) if coverage from there might be of interest?
Thanks for your kind support in the past.
All the best,
Mo