Valentine's Day is a time for love, a time to celebrate all the great love stories we secretly hope we can one day live out. We want a Mr. Darcy, a Jack from Titanic, a Harry or Sally to remind us that we are worthy of attention.
But what if there were no great romances to aspire to? What if you had never seen someone like you get their dream person? How do you hold out hope for something you've never actually seen happen?
This is the primary question Noah Ramirez faces in Meet Cute Diary by Emery Lee. As a Trans teen, Noah has never seen an epic Trans love story, so he decides to make one up. He soon finds himself running a popular internet blog, The Meet Cute Diary, where he features different Trans love stories submitted by readers. The only catch is they're all fake. Once haters start to get suspicious and call Noah out, he weaves the ultimate lie that he, himself, is in a happy relationship.
The chaos behind the craft
I sat down with author Emery Lee to discuss fake dating, the importance of having Trans love stories, and how to craft a chaotic yet loveable character. (Note: Lee uses the neopronouns e, em, and eir.)
While Meet Cute Diary is Lee's first officially published novel, e had already drafted eight other manuscripts prior to it. "I've been writing since I was in elementary school," e said, "but I was unsure of what I wanted to do or what I wanted my career to look like."
E ultimately began networking with publishers and other writers and sent Meet Cute Diary out as a test. The story was compelling and got Lee eir first publishing deal.
Agents were initially very interested in a Trans story, but once they realized Lee's book was a light-hearted rom-com and not a tragic coming-out story, they were skeptical. "I think the reception was warmer with readers than it was with agents," Lee said. "At first I got a lot of interest, and then I noticed that interest tended to shrivel up a little bit in terms of agent rounds, because people were expecting it to be a much more serious book, an issue book exploring the Trans experience, which it's not. It's a rom-com book."
Despite the concerns of publishers, Meet Cute Diary became an instant hit, especially with Trans readers, who desperately wanted to see their stories reflected in fun and lighthearted adventures. "Readers seemed happy about [the lightheartedness]... one of the most common praises I get is that readers are excited about a Trans book that's a rom-com and not following the coming-of-age plotline," e said.
Despite the book breaking ground as one of the first Trans rom-coms, e admits, writing an LGBTQ story wasn't even on Lee's radar when e first began writing. "I didn't even explore my own identity until later," e said. "When I first started writing books, I just mirrored the stuff I would read. All the characters were straight, white, able-bodied characters. It wasn't until maybe college that I started finding more diverse books and involving myself with more diverse readers. That was when I realized I could explore identity, and that was when I started writing more diverse books."
When Lee finally sat down to write Meet Cute Diary, eir hope was to create a classic, trope-heavy rom-com. "I knew I wanted to write a rom-com, and I knew I wanted it to be very tropey and very genre immersed. I didn't want it to be a coming-of-age story. I wanted to lean into the comedy," e said.
While e hoped to write a very conventional rom-com, the process of getting from conception to final draft was anything but. Lee describes the writing process as "absolute chaos." E said e does not plan well when it comes to drafting novels.
"I don't plot and I rarely plan. I tend to just kind of have vibes, and I'll start with a playlist or make a Pinterest board or even throw around thoughts and feelings, and at some point, I'll be like, OK, let me just sit down and start typing. Sometimes it will be a cohesive story out of the gate; other times it's a complete disaster. I just follow what energy the story is giving me," e said with a laugh.
Seeing emself on the page
The idea that Noah would be Trans came to Lee later. "I was playing around with the concept of the story, and I just thought, 'Let me make this character as similar to myself as I feel I can,'" e said. "At the time, I was... exploring my gender for the first time."
E decided to make the main character triracial, Gay, and Trans, "so that I could do a self-insert into a rom-com story," e laughed. "How fun would it be to take the character I was in high school and throw him into all these scenarios? I feel like it made it easy to write, because a lot of stuff I didn't think through — his reactions to things were the first thought in my head, because he is me."
While putting emself into the story made the writing flow more smoothly for Lee, it also meant the editing process was much harder. "It made it harder when it came time to revise and market the book, because it reached a point where it became 'how much of what I'm putting out is fiction versus how much of it is myself, and am I handing myself out to other people to critique?'" Lee said.
Despite the challenges that came with creating a much more personal story, Lee felt the result was more natural and authentic than if e had written a cis-het character. E also admits that, despite the book being a journey of personal growth for em, e never intended for it to be a "life-changing" book for anyone else.
"Ultimately, I don't want [readers] to feel like this has to be the book that changes their life, that it means something super special to them, because it's just one book," e admits. "I wrote it so that Trans characters can have fun like cis and straight characters so often do. So, all I want readers to take away is a good time, and if they aren't having a good time, it's not the book for them, and that's fine. My goal was never to be a lesson to Trans readers on how they should live or what they should be. It's just to have a good time."
To maximize the good vibes in Meet Cute Diary, Lee tried to cram in as many of eir favorite rom-com tropes as possible. "I love meet-cute and fake dating. I think they're a lot of fun," e said. "I'm also a big fan of anything involving enemies-to-lovers. I also love a good second-chance romance or anything with forced proximity."
E also thinks that writing a Queer rom-com can make writing tropes easier. "I feel like any forbidden romance, like Romeo and Juliet or like rivals-to-lovers... I just feel like Queer stories do that better, because they're better at understanding the complexities of why two people might not be able to be together," e said.
"I also think second-chance romance is better when it's Queer. For instance, a Trans character before and after: that's a different person, so that second chance is so much stronger."
Future projects
While Lee wasn't able to put every trope in Meet Cute Diary, e does hope to include more Queer romance in upcoming novels. E also hopes to branch out and explore more types of Queer representation in the future.
"I want to write more Aro [Aromantic] and Ace [Asexual] stories as well as more sapphic stories. I would also like to write more Trans and Nonbinary characters. I feel like with Meet Cute Diary, it was a very specific type of experience, and now I'm trying to move past that and write a different type of Trans and Nonbinary stories."
Lee also wants to explore protagonists who use the same neopronouns e does, but e understands that publishers might not be ready for those conversations just quite yet. So for now, e is sneaking in neopronouns where e can.
"I have a character in Meet Cute Diary who settles on the same pronouns as me, and I have another character that also uses neopronouns. I tend to restrict my neopronouns to side characters, because I think to a certain extent it's something [that] publishers haven't caught up with it yet," e said.
Lee's next book, Café Con Lychee is scheduled to hit the shelves in May 2022. Like Meet Cute Diary, it is a Queer rom-com, but this time Lee centers Nonbinary teen Theo in a delicious enemies-to-lovers plot.
Following that release, Lee will have several short stories featured in upcoming fiction anthologies. "I have a short story in the All Signs Point to Yes anthology," e said, "and I also have another short story in the anthology Transmogrify that comes out in 2023."
With so much exciting work on the horizon, Lee is very busy, but e can still find time for fun with friends. As Valentine's Day quickly approaches, e took a moment to reflect on some favorite Valentine's Day activities.
"I actually used to do an anti-Valentine's Day party where I got together with my friends, and we'd all celebrate the fact that we're single," e laughed. "It would just be a lot of jokes and puns... talking about being single and making fun of romance, and it was a very middle finger to the love-holiday event," e said.
For readers out there who are single and looking for a perfect meet-cute story to warm their hearts this Valentine's Day, swing by your local bookstore and pick up a copy of Meet Cute Diary. Café Con Lychee will be out May 10, 2022.