We are very happy to announce that Matthew’s novella, tentatively title The Way You Are, has been contracted to Dreamspinner Press. This will be Matthew’s first story available through Dreamspinner, and we are all very excited to be working with them.
The Way You Are follows Leon, a shy, self-effacing business student at the University of Newcastle, who starts to visit coma patient Travis ‘Rook’ Rookford, a heterosexual student who gets gay bashed by a group of bogans*. At the hospital he meets, falls in love with, and has a lovers tiff with hunky male nurse Warrick, in that order. Then, when Rook finally wakes up, Leon is surprised to find Rook convinced that he and Leon are dating. In the midst of dealing with loving a man in conservative regional Australia, Rook’s upcoming court appearance and his own studies, Leon has to come to terms with what he wants, and gets to find out whether every gay man’s dream of having a hot straight guy fall for you is everything it’s cracked up to be. And he hasn’t even started Christmas shopping yet.
*Bogan, according to the 2012 Oxford English Dictionary, is a “depreciative term for an unfashionable, uncouth, or unsophisticated person, especially of low social status”. It’s a very Australian term, and has, so we are told, nothing to do with the town of Bogan in New South Wales.
Stay tuned for updates and eventual cover art from this exciting new development!