QSR Interview: Chelsea M. Cameron

I should do way more interviews. This is a lot less work for me than my normal blog posts!

Please give a warm welcome to Chelsea!

Q. Tell us a little about your books!

Oh, wow that’s a loaded question. Haha. I feel like I try to write romance that’s just a little bit quirky. A little bit (or sometimes a lot) nerdy. Romance that is both intense and funny at the same time. Even my most serious books have dick jokes in them. I can’t seem to help myself. And I write the books I want to read. When I wanted sweet f/f romance, I wrote it. When I wanted an office romance where SHE was the boss and he was the employee, I wrote it. This strategy has paid off so far, so I think I’ll stick to it.

Q. What made you write the stories you did? What do they mean to you?

Like I said above, I write the stories I want to read. Usually my books start of as a question “what if I wrote about…” and go from there. Especially with my queer work, I’ve tried to think about people are asking for more of, and run that parallel to what I want to write. So many of my friends/readers were wanting a fluffy f/f romance that didn’t center around trauma about coming out, and it just so happened that I wanted to read that too, so I wrote it. It was the BEST writing experience I’ve ever had. I loved it. I cried while writing. It was amazing. I’ve had so many wonderful and intense experiences writing books and sometimes I look back and read them and realize that I was working through some of my own struggles without even realizing it. Especially in my m/f books. There are SO many queer undertones and I had no idea.

Q. What are some of your favourite things to read in queer books?

Queer romances are my jam. I love stories that don’t center on the trauma of being queer, and instead have other conflict just like every other relationship has at some point. I love queer flirting. Seriously, banter is the BEST. I love reading about queer friendship groups. I love baby queers just figuring themselves out. I love messy queers who maybe don’t know what they’re doing, but they do their best. I love people who are problematic and human and real.

Q. Got any fun summer reading plans?

I am so hopelessly behind on my Goodreads goal this year, it’s humiliating. But right now my TBR is filled with delicious queer book goodness. Some books that are at the top: Chameleon Moon, Misfits, Knit one, Girl Two, Labyrinth Lost, Every Heart is a Doorway, Ramona Blue, The Melody of You and Me, A Darkly Beating Heart, Coffee Boy, the list goes on. But I'm determined to make my way through as many queer books as possible this summer.

Q. Tell us one of your favourite experiences with someone who’s read your book.

One of my favorites happened at my first book signing in Orlando. A girl rushed up to my table and told me how much she loved my book, My Favorite Mistake. She said that she’d been so engrossed reading it that she’d been ignoring her boyfriend and he got mad because he said he had something to ask her. Finally, she put the book down and he got down on one knee and proposed! She showed me the ring and it was so cute.

Q. I want queer vampires to become a thing in 2020. What is a thing you would love to see in queer books in the future?

YES, I’M ON TEAM QUEER VAMPIRES. Totally. I love the idea of taking all the “tired” tropes from romance and just making them queer: enemies to lovers, marriage of convenience, co-workers, all that. I also want, with all my heart, a f/f multi-book fantasy series with rich world-building and a huge cast of queer characters. I want that more than ANYTHING.

Q. What’s your favourite recent queer read? What queer book are you looking forward to?

I recently read An Unnatural Vice by K. J. Charles and it was LOVELY. Seriously, her books are great. I’m eagerly anticipating the third book in that series because reading the description, I think one of the leads is going to be genderqueer! I’m DYING for Wild Beauty by Anna-Marie McLemore. Seriously. I would do evil things for an ARC of that book. When the Moon was Ours is one of my favourite books ever.

Q. What’s something you always want to say in interviews but no one ever asks?

Huh. You’d think that having a degree in journalism, I would have thought of this before. Oh, maybe what’s one book that you’ve learned the most from?

Q. Favourite summer drink?

I love a good pina colada, but my real go-to is a good half-and-half (half lemonade, half iced tea).

Q. Favourite frozen summer treat?

A. Ice cream! I love cookie dough, vanilla with butterscotch, and Lobster Tracks. It’s too cold to eat ice cream any other time, so I go wild during the summer. I also don’t turn down a nice freeze pop. The kind that comes in a huge bag and all those neon colors.

Chelsea M. Cameron is a New York Times/USA Today Best Selling author from Maine. She's a red velvet cake enthusiast, obsessive tea drinker, vegetarian, former cheerleader and world's worst video gamer. When not writing, she enjoys watching infomercials, singing in the car, tweeting (this one time, she was tweeted by Neil Gaiman) and playing fetch with her cat, Sassenach. She has a degree in journalism from the University of Maine, Orono that she promptly abandoned to write about the people in her own head. More often than not, these people turn out to be just as weird as she is.

Find her on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Patreon.

Thanks for the interview, Chelsea!

Peace and popsicles,
Laina