Grief for a Writer – On the Closing of Cobblestone Press

It’s no secret: I love love.

I love the act of being in love, the bliss of being loved and the infatuation that becomes lust and hopefully turns into love. I have always been a romantic at heart, so it should come as no surprise that I cut my writing teeth with romance novels.

My very first romance novel, Valentine, was published by Cobblestone Press LLC. They were a diverse and inclusive publisher that gave my voice a home. When I began writing the book, I had no idea what I was doing. I have always read romance novels. Caridad Pineiro, Nora Roberts, Diana Palmer, Linda Lael Miller and more were my constant companions and the worlds that they brought to life for me were filled with characters that I grew to love.

Before I started writing Valentine, I took a look online to see if there was anyone writing gay romance novels. There wasn’t a lot to choose from back in 1998. I’m not sure how I landed on Cobblestone Press, but once I found the site, I became overjoyed. There was a platform for me. They actively published gay romance and LGBTQ erotic romance novels.

It took me a while to write Valentine. I had heard an old myth about how Valentine had been a cleric who had been marrying people in secret against Emperor Claudius II who had forbidden any kind of marriage. He was jailed and watched over by Asterius, his jailer and protector while Valentine waited for execution.

Asterius had a blind daughter. The legend goes that Valentine gave a handwritten card he had made to the blind girl and upon trying to read the word, the girls sight was restored. I loved that myth and wondered what would have happened if Valentine and Asterius fell in love with each other. What kind of things would happen then?

The book grew from this idea and ended up spawning two other books. Valentine also launched me into the world of M/M romance. At the time, I assumed that my books found an audience with gay men that wanted to read fiction with them at the forefront. I didn’t know that most of my audience was women and I loved that so much when I learned who was reading my books.

I would go on to write forty-two romance stories for Cobblestone Press. I even taught a workshop for Cobblestone Press on how to write M/M romance that I called Riding the Lighting (which should be out later this year). I loved being at the forefront of gay romance and M/M erotic romance. I wrote for Mari Gras Press and Breathless Press, too. My first number one bestselling book was Hard, the book that launched the M/M romance line with Breathless Press.

Both Mardi Gras Press and Breathless Press closed their doors, but Coblestone stayed strong…that is until the owner and operator or the press became ill. Still, she pushed onwards until she couldn’t anymore and it was announced that Cobblestone Press was closing its doors. I thought I would have time to prepare, that I would have time to properly honour the press that had given me so much. However, the announcement was made and within the space of a day, Cobblestone Press was no more.

I have been grieving in a way. I mean, I learned so much writing for Cobblestone Press. I learned about structure, pace, character and setting through the edits of all my Cobblestone books. I learned about synonyms while editing Valentine. If the writing had been fun, it was nothing compared to the editing. I remember getting the first-round edits on Valentine and the editors note saying such lovely things as: “A dick can do more than grow hard. It can thicken, pulse, throb, vibrate, etc.” It was an eye opener for me. I knew that the editors were merely helping me make a better story with more fleshed-out characters, but with each book, I kept trying to find more words that would suffice.

I will miss Cobblestone Press. It was the platform I told most of my stories on. I am grieving for the loss of a publisher that gave me a voice and my stories and characters a home. I will miss Cobblestone Press and everything that they stood for.

The books I published with Cobblestone Press will be republished, but it won’t be the same. I will always and forever be grateful for them. I’m the writer I am today because of Cobblestone Press and I am so thankful for the gift that they gave me.

Take a click below and check out some of my book covers.