Robert J. Halliwell: “My own experiences with love and romance influence me massively. I’m not the sort of person who can write things that I have no connection to.”
AS WE celebrate Pride Month, I’m thrilled to feature an Own Voice author whose work brilliantly highlights the importance of diverse voices in fiction, including authentic gay/queer storytelling. There’s something especially meaningful about reading stories written by people who are more likely to share the identities and experiences of the characters they write about. Own Voices literature brings nuance, honesty, and emotional depth that can resonate in a completely different way, especially for LGBTQ+ readers looking to see themselves reflected on the page.
So without further ado, I’m pleased to welcome Robert J. Halliwell to the blog. Robert is a Canadian writer who crafts character-driven stories with profound emotional impact, including ones that explore gay/queer identity during adolescence.
His work often centres on themes of first love, self-discovery, and the challenges and triumphs of growing up LGBTQ+, alongside narratives which navigate deeper explorations of grief, friendship, and the richness of found family. Robert is the author of The Ties That Bind, And Then He Pressed Play: Track One, as well as its upcoming sequel, And Then He Pressed Play: Track Two.
In this interview, Robert and I explore a range of topics, including his perspective on the complexities of separating love from romance, narrative tropes in romance fiction that irk him, queer representation in fiction, and how lived experience can shape the writing and reception of LGBTQ+ stories.
Check out my review of And Then He Pressed Play: Track One here!
Robert, looking back on your writing journey, both as a form of creative expression and as the beginning of a literary career, who or what has been your greatest source of inspiration? Was there a defining moment when you realized, “I have stories I want to tell—through my voice and my perspective”? And when writing something so emotionally open and personal, especially within gay/queer YA fiction, how do you navigate the vulnerability that comes with putting your work out into the world, along with the inevitable praise, criticism, or perhaps even the more unsettling response: indifference.
I’ve had a pretty healthy imagination for as long as I can remember. I had my share of friends when I was growing up, of course, but I was definitely the kid who was content to sit inside and read or else wander around and make up little stories as I went.
As I grew up and got a better grasp of my ABCs, I always enjoyed reading and writing. English was one of my favourite subjects largely because there was seldom any one right answer, unless you were talking about spelling or grammar (imagine my surprise to find out, as an adult, that grammar is semi-optional in prose). [You’re brave saying that to a University English graduate!😏]
So I guess a big imagination, a fondness for worlds that don’t quite exist on Earth, and liking English enough to not drop it once it stopped being compulsory all sort of led up to me trying my hand at being an author.
Your sophomore work, the gay/queer YA romance novel And Then He Pressed Play: 
Track One, deviates from the traditional “coming out” or “sexual awakening” storyline by introducing its protagonist, A.J., as openly gay from the very beginning. What inspired you to make this narrative choice? Did you intentionally challenge some of the familiar expectations surrounding identity and authenticity among out, closeted, and questioning teens traditionally portrayed in gay/queer YA fiction? Was A.J., as a narrative device, meant to be a counterpart to Bren’s gradual acknowledgement and acceptance of his own sexuality?
I definitely challenged some of the genre expectations/expected tropes with this one, and I’m very glad I did. Don’t get me wrong, there’s something comforting about picking up a book and knowing the general flow of the story before you even open it, but I take issue with the idea that you have to write a story like that. The world would be pretty boring if everything followed the same script.
That said, I am very much not a fan of things like the third-act breakup or a plot constantly driven by misunderstandings between friends/lovers that could be solved in 5 minutes of open conversation. When I run into the latter in stories, I definitely shake the book and scream “TALK TO EACH OTHER” and not in a fun feet-kicky way.”
As for A.J. being a narrative device as a counterpart to Bren: Not in any direct, thought-out way. I’m largely a pantser, and my core idea was “What if this weird, shy, yet oddly self-assured gay guy ran into an extroverted ball of confidence that never once stopped to question some of the deeper parts of himself.” I’m not sure if it’s pretentious or not, but I’m a very character-driven writer. It’s less “OK, what does the story do next?” and more “OK, XYZ happened, how do the characters each react to that?”
I did intend him to be a bit of an opposite to A.J. at first glance, but for them to have similar, good and kind hearts at their cores, even if they express them differently.
Robert, you lost your dad when you were 12, and you’ve mentioned that things at home were pretty unstable for a while afterwards. That personal history seems to resonate in your 2025 debut novel, The Ties That Bind, which follows 14-year-old Zoey Thompson, who is still coping with the loss of her father two years before the story begins. The novel poignantly explores navigating grief and a parent’s absence through the eyes and emotions of a young protagonist.
Did you choose to include a fantastical or supernatural element in the story to create emotional distance from such a personal, close-to-home subject? What was your thought process behind making the main character a teen girl? Was that also a way to create narrative distance from the material? And why did this story come first for you, published before A.J. and Bren’s romance?
Yeah, The Ties That Bind was basically “Healthy(?) Narrative Distance, the Novel”. As you said, a lot 
of that story was lifted from my life, though, again, the characters and specifics of the situation are a patchwork of formerly nonexistent bits.
I chose a female protagonist—Zoey—as part of the aforementioned distance, but another reason was that a lot of my best and closest friends at that time (in most parts of my life) were girls. I wanted to capture some of the strength, wit, and vulnerabilities I saw in the girls and women in my life at that time. I love my guy friends dearly, and again, no group is a monolith, but emotionally honest, open conversations always came more naturally for me when it wasn’t two guys talking.
As far as the magic goes, it’s just such a fun thing to play around with and immerse yourself in. I wanted magic in the novel to act as a sort of counterbalance to the grief, but one that was inseparable from said grief. It was a way to bring two girls who were going through similar circumstances together, give them a way to bond that was unique and special to them, and in Nicole’s case, the universe was throwing someone a bone for once, even if Zoey had to drag it kicking and screaming.
Not to give too much away, but going off of what I have planned after this series, ATHPP might be the outlier in its lack of magic. Other than that, mum’s the word.
The Ties That Bind was sort of a therapy for me, and naturally came before ATHPP. Even after the idea for A.J. and Bren’s story was largely formed in my mind, I wondered whether people would even want to read it, or whether I was allowed to write it because I’m not from Ireland. Turns out, people want to read it much more than Ties. And it turns out that not being from Ireland but wanting to get it as close to right as I could has led me to some amazing friendships with some wonderful Irish people.
Robert, as an openly gay Canadian writer, do you think your sexuality influences your writing in subtle, perhaps subconscious ways that naturally give it a gay/queer-centred perspective? Or are LGBTQ+ themes always a conscious creative choice?
It’s for sure always in the back of my head. All my planned books have queer characters and themes, and I wouldn’t have made that choice if I weren’t part of the rainbow crew, I’m sure. But even with my debut, I was mindful of things that I’m not sure non-queer authors would be.
As an example, Zoey’s story is one of overcoming loss and choosing connections with humans even though those connections can’t be permanent. Her sexuality doesn’t figure in, but I did speculate at times where she falls in that regard because of how much that can shape how a person acts and the decisions they make. It’s often harder to trust or confide in people when you have a giant secret part of yourself that you feel you can’t share with them out of fear of being abandoned or harmed.
As far as where Zoey falls in that regard, I’m still not really sure, but she’d be an ally at the very least. I like Zoey quite a bit.
What is it about the romance genre, particularly regarding intimate relationships between men, that excites and inspires you? Is it simply that, as a gay man, you want to tell gay/queer stories? How do your experiences with love and relationships influence your writing?
Checking over my shoulder for pretense here, but I definitely feel myself drawn to love stories more than romance. It might be splitting hairs, or maybe it’s just a me thing, but romance stories (which I do read and enjoy) are more focused on the swoon, the “will-they-won’t-they?” trope, and on fulfilling expectations.
Love stories are more about the characters and their relationships with each other and the world around them, even when that world is cruel. The projects I have planned after ATHPP are very much love stories but not romances in my mind, though I will say ATHPP straddles the line.
Basically, I’ll always write love stories, but they won’t always be romantic.
My own experiences with love and romance influence me massively. I’m not the sort of person who can write things that I have no connection to. I’ve dealt with grief, so The Ties That Bind was born from that. I’ve experienced love and romance with someone with whom I needed a passport to be with, so ATHPP happened.
As I continue to write, I think my books will grow further away from core things that have happened to me, but they’ll always stay linked to things that I know emotionally.
To what extent do you feel gay/queer love stories bring something uniquely different to the romance genre compared to traditional heterosexual or heteronormative narratives, including those where bi or pansexual characters are written in ways that still read as essentially straight? Should gay/queer relationships in fiction be written from a perspective that authentically reflects the realities of same-sex desire, attachment, and love, rather than feeling like characters’ genders have simply been swapped within a conventional heterosexual framework?
I might ruffle some feathers here, but the above is something I see mostly from heterosexual authors writing queer, and I’m not a fan. No group of people are a monolith, but gay men tend to have relationships that are different from gay women, who have different relationships from straight men and women and so on.
I’m not saying that someone can only write about a specific relationship if they’ve experienced it themselves. But it’s obvious to me when a story about us has been written by someone who isn’t us, or worse, hasn’t even really talked to us. There are some pretty popular stories out there that seem like good visibility and representation, but when I personally look a little closer, it just feels like people looking at their idea of us, or the parts of us they find interesting. My bitter is showing, but I feel like a lot of them would vote to take our rights away.
Back to books: our stories are unique and different and diverse, and taking a story and simply shuffling sexual, gender, and relationship identities always stands out to me, in a DNF sort of way.
And Then He Pressed Play: Track One combines themes of tenderness and romance with elements of bullying, violence, and anti-gay hostility. The cover of your novel suggests a more lighthearted read, yet a trigger warning precedes the story to acknowledge its more solemn and grittier themes.
How did you navigate writing those darker moments to ensure they felt emotionally honest while still preserving the hopeful and playful essence of the love story?
So, full disclosure, there’s a part of me that wishes the cover nodded towards the harder stuff a little bit more (maybe a cast or a bruise?), but chalk that up to being fairly new as an author.
As far as navigating the story, I trusted myself and my characters. As I alluded to above, love is great, but it doesn’t mean the world always reflects that. It was important to me not to shy away from what the world can be like, but equally important not to focus on the wrong parts of it. We didn’t need to see the violence on the page or the cruelty in agonizing detail. That puts the focus on the person doing the harm or the harm itself. The more important element of the story was what it did to the characters and how they dealt with it.
As far as the balancing, I guess it sort of came naturally. Don’t get me wrong, I tweaked and edited and moved stuff around like every writer does, but queer joy and the harder stuff (unfortunately) go hand in hand a lot of the time. I long for a world where that’s not true, but until then, I think it’s going to be a part of any queer relationship I write in one way or another. Though maybe it’ll fade with time if I’m doing this when I’m 80 (yes please).
Music plays a poignant role in And Then He Pressed Play: Track One. It functions as more than nostalgia (as the story is set in 2006); it becomes a kind of emotional language between A.J. and Bren. When growing up, for many of us—queer or not—music often serves as an outlet for stress and anxiety, helping us make sense of the emotional whirlwind within ourselves, while also connecting us to friendships with people who share similar tastes and interests.
Was using music as a tool of narrative connection devised from the start, or something that came later? How does the book’s title factor into the creative timeline and the genesis of this theme?
Music was very much foundational to ATHPP from the beginning. I actually knew the last line of the novel before the vast majority of what happened in the middle. Why it was such a theme in the story is largely due to how I write characters. Pretty much everyone I write is a patchwork of people I’ve encountered in my life, as well as aspects of myself. If I’ve exchanged more than hello with someone, there’s a chance a piece of them will end up in a character. It’s not a one-for-one of “Oh, this character is Susan from work, and that one’s the guy I sometimes chat with at the gym,” though. The patchworking is strong, and bits of this person and that are strung together as a starting point, then bits that are fully unique to the character are added as I go.
I guess this is a really long way of saying that A.J. isn’t me, but he does share my love of music as a core truth to him, although he uses it to regulate himself a bit differently than I do.
[Below is the piano instrumental of “The Navigator,” composed by Katarzyna Kempińska. It’s A.J. and Bren’s love song from “And Then He Pressed Play: Track One.” When I asked Robert about the meaning of this song, he said: “Very much about being in love for the first time. More than infatuation or lusty feelings. Feeling, for the first time, that someone chose to be with you, even though they didn’t have to. And being brave enough to do so in return.”]
Robert, given your own connection to music and how it may have helped you cope with emotions and stress in your youth, were there specific artists, albums, or songs that influenced the writing of the novel or shaped the emotional arcs of the characters, either beyond or including those mentioned in the book, such as Evanescence, Green Day, and the ever so gay Wicked Broadway cast recording? Also, I died when I saw Cascada mentioned. I used to (Oh, who am I kidding—I still do!) switch between Dance, Pop, and Goth/Dark Wave/Alternative all the time.
Welp, I sort of gave myself away with the last answer, so let’s keep going. Nearly every artist or song
mentioned in ATHPP is one that I personally enjoy. I was very much a theatre kid in high school (tech, not stage, though), and Wicked was massive in that circle back then, so, of course, it found its way to me.
If there’s a day in my life when I’m not listening to music, there’s something very wrong. I use music very much as an outlet, and as time goes on, I associate specific styles/artists/songs with important moments/eras in my life. I lean towards pop (including J and K-pop), rock, and musicals, but there’s something for me to like about pretty much every genre at the end of the day.
I’m also here for the Cascada camaraderie. Jonathan Young’s cover of Everytime We Touch was playing on my shuffle about an hour before I answered this question.
Despite my love of music, I didn’t see my first live concert until last year. It was Ado’s Hibana World Tour, and I highly recommend her to anyone with a pulse. New Genesis, Usseewa, Unravel and Tot Musica are good places to start—according to my taste in Ado, which is excellent.
The setting of Glenbridge and the Canada–Ireland exchange dynamic create a strong sense of cultural contrast and connection in And Then He Pressed Play: Track One. Considering your experience growing up in Canada, why was it important for you to explore queer adolescence through both Canadian and Irish perspectives? How did those contrasting cultural settings help shape the emotional and thematic core of the story, particularly in relation to identity, belonging, and self-discovery?
I started off knowing it was an exchange story with a Canadian as one of the protagonists, but I didn’t know the other half was in Ireland at the time. I considered the USA, France, Germany, and England, as well. I ruled out the USA because, although our countries are very different, there’s a lot of cultural overlap. As a Canadian who married an American (Hi Adam!), it was also too close to my lived experience for comfort.
Germany and France fell out because of the language barrier, both for me and for poor A.J.; England seemed a bit too “easy” in terms of A.J. blending in and being accepted. Canada used to be part of the British Empire and all that, so that left us with Ireland.
I’ll admit I felt a bit of a pull to Ireland because I’m (very loosely) tied to it through a great-great-grandfather who was born there. A fun little coincidence is that I set the story near Cork, never knowing where in Ireland he was from, and it turns out he was from Cork (Which is the capital of Ireland dontcha know 😉 ).
Anyway, Ireland fits because while there’s cultural overlap and a shared dominant language, the country has a massively strong sense of self, and despite all that’s been done to it and its people, it carries on and accepts those who earnestly try to understand and belong (and you know—don’t try and colonize them). Also, sarcasm and slag as affection are fun to write, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned from the friends I’ve made there, you know you’re friends once they start making you question if they even like you.
You’ve stated, “Hate will never win in my books.” In a time when our stories are still being challenged, politicized, and even banned, what responsibility, if any, do you think gay/queer authors have when writing about gay/queer characters and for LGBTQ+ readers? Conversations in our community and culture often emphasize the importance of visibility and authenticity, especially during Pride Month.
So, Robert, as a gay man, consumer, and Own-Voices author, what do meaningful visibility and authenticity in our literature mean to you?
To me, visibility is, in a sense, pretty straightforward. The more queer stories we can get out there, the better.
As much as you hear people complain that they can’t pick up X media without having a queer character shoved down their throats, it’s really not the case. More so, a lot of the queer characters that do exist are flattened ideas of us, written by, at best, well-meaning heteronormative people and, at worst, people perpetuating stereotypes and false images because it sells or serves a purpose.
It’s important to me that queer people appear in any and every medium, genre or style people want to see them in, whether that person be a creative or a consumer. I do still want the love stories and coming outs and struggling against persecution and attempted elimination, but I also love seeing things like: “Ok, an action movie, but what if it wasn’t all straight people.”
I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but so many people who aren’t a part of our community just don’t understand how different life is growing up queer. When you’re straight, you see yourself, or at least your romantic interests, in nearly every piece of media. It’s not even that it’s accepted; it’s just seen as the normal default.
When we do see ourselves in media, we’re often campy, one-dimensional or quickly buried. More than that, there’s often a whisper of “Oh, this is just to check a box” or “Ugh, so woke.” It’s better in a lot of ways than when I was growing up, which was better in a lot of ways than when the generation before me was. However, we’re still a long way off from what I’d like to see, which is people getting to see themselves in media and not having to feel grateful or thankful, if that makes sense.
As a little side note, there’s also this weird idea that just because something is queer, it’s sexual. I actually struggled with this a bit while writing ATHPP. It’s internalized homophobia, sadly, and while it’s not a dominating force in my head, it does whisper sometimes.
I’d be writing a scene where Bren and A.J. are kissing, hand trailing around, feeling the love they share and going “Ok, but isn’t this kind of like, overly sexual? Or pushing things on people?” Then I asked myself, “Ok, what if it was A.J. and Brenda? (and now I’ve made myself sad picturing heteronormative Bren and A.J.).” And the immediate answer was, “No, it’s teens being teens like they are in every teen story where there’s romance and kissing.”
So I guess, in short, we all need visibility, even those of us who are trying to add to that visibility.
Robert, you’re an avid knitter and yarn enthusiast, soap maker, and Sailor Moon fan—though I hear you prefer the title “Sailor Senshi” to “Moonie.” Regarding your love of books, do you have any classic favourites? What are you currently reading? Do you prefer specific genres, or are your tastes quite diverse?
I was thirty-five years old when I first heard the term “Moonie,” and I do prefer to think of myself as an honorary Senshi instead. As far as reading goes, I do bounce around a bit based on mood. That said, queer stories (non-epic), fantasy and YA tend to get the most read time from me.
Also, it depends on what you mean by classics. Little Women is one of my favourites and fits the bill for a classic, but The Hunger Games and anything by Scott Westerfeld get a lot of my attention most months. I’ve been reading a lot more indies since I joined that realm myself, and I’m a massive fan of Simon Doyle, particularly This Is Not A Vampire Story. [Me too! Check out my review of This Is Not A Vampire Story and my awesome interview with Own Voice author Simon Doyle!]
As for what I’m reading now, it’s a bit of a secret, but it’s a WIP of a mutual of mine, and once it’s done, I expect it’ll be right up there with my other favourites.
Looking ahead, what’s next for you creatively? I know your follow-up to And Then He Pressed Play: Track One—the gay/queer YA novel And Then He Pressed Play: Track Two—is currently slated for an October 2026 release. Without spoiling anything, how does this novel connect to the first book? Is this a continuation of A.J. and Bren’s story, or something that stands on its own within a broader narrative? Are we looking at a connective series here? Spill!
Track Two is a direct continuation from Track One. It picks up at the start of grade twelve and follows the boys, their friends, and families, both found and born, through their last year of high school. I don’t consider it a spoiler myself, but in case anyone reading this does. *Spoiler Alert* Track Three is set to follow them through some portion of their university years. As for which country it’s set in, whether they attend university, and which year(s) of that time in their life it covers, that’s a secret for now.
I’ve also been dying to announce this, so I figure this is a good place to do it. The first novel I have planned for after ATHPP is titled My Shooting Star. It’s something of a bridge between my debut and ATHPP. It’s a standalone, not directly connected in any way, but there will be queer love, mist, and some tough stuff for my main characters to work out.
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