Photo: Sylvie Rosokoff Casey McQuiston believes you can tell a lot about someone by their bagel order. The author of Red, White & Royal Blue — the candy-hued queer-romance novel you have most certainly spotted in a bookstore by now — likes a toasted everything BEC with pepper jack and hot sauce.
One Last Stop is a tribute to the “dumb, small life things,” as Jane — in possession of a heartbeat but not quite of this world — longingly refers to them: “My dim sum place. The cat in my bodega. Banging on the ceiling because the neighbor was practicing his trombone too loud, you know? Dumb shit. I miss figuring out scams with my friends. Having a beer. Going to the movies.”
McQuiston is a little ambivalent about the attention. She keeps a lot of her life private — “At the end of the day, I’m just a person who rides the subway and eats my Trader Joe’s meals” — and is eager to acknowledge the authors who paved the way for queer love stories like hers. Being seen as a trailblazer doesn’t sit right with her — she’s just here to show you a good time.
Because of their striking pastel covers, McQuiston’s books are sometimes mistaken for young-adult novels, no matter how many reminders she tweets otherwise. That’s because the YA world moves a little faster than other corners of publishing when it comes to depicting queer love stories, and because, in the past few years, there’s also been a trend of publishers giving romance novels illustrated covers to reach readers who might not think of themselves as “romance readers.
McQuiston did not seem surprised to hear this. There is something quintessentially queer about obsessing over the life you want versus the life you have. “You do have this beautiful fantasy where you’re just surrounded by people who get you all the time,” she says. This is especially true for queer people who do not come from a particularly welcoming environment, as she did — McQuiston grew up in Louisiana, attending Evangelical school by day and Catholic Mass on the weekends.
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