In Cat Sebastian’s Queer Historical Romances, Fighting For Change Is Part of the Happy Ending

A few years back, author Cat Sebastian heard there wasn’t a market for historical romance set in the 20th century, so she wrote most of her novels — all of them queer historical fiction — in the distant past, focusing especially on the Georgian and Regency eras. But when National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo, for those in the know) came around in 2021, she decided to ignore that advice and write “We Could Be So Good” — published this June — instead. The story follows Nick Russo, a 1950s newspaper reporter at a fictional progressive paper. Nick, who comes from an Italian-American family in South Brooklyn, is gay — not that he plans for most people to ever find out. His life turns upside down when he meets Andy, the boss’s son who’s getting ready to take over the paper soon. They become fast friends, but before long, they’re both pining for each other from opposite ends of the newsroom.

That image — of two lovesick reporters — was the germ of the idea for Sebastian to write “We Could Be So Good.” “When I have an idea that I really want to write, I haven’t yet been successful in resisting it,” she tells POPSUGAR. And the author was excited about writing about a new era of history.

Only in writing the book — which Sebastian describes as “very cozy and domestic” — did she realize what about the time period was appealing to her. The 1950s, she says, were when “a certain type of cozy domesticity was being advertised as literally patriotism, as the only way to live. And obviously this was exclusive to middle-class and rich, straight white people.”

“I have two characters who both secretly — or not so secretly — want that but think they’re not going to get it,” she says of Nick and Andy. “It’s basically about them claiming that idea as their own and also realizing that maybe [the ideal family] doesn’t exist in any meaningful way.”

In “We Could Be So Good,” Nick and Andy’s happiness isn’t just personal; they’re also intent on using their platform at the newspaper to help affect change citywide. The characters of the two novels in Sebastian’s London Highwaymen series — 2021’s “The Queer Principles of Kit Webb” and 2022’s “The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes” — have a similar progressive politic wrapped up in their happy endings (they’re the only romance novels I’ve ever read that challenge the idea that marrying a duke would be a dream come true). “I’m writing happy endings for my characters and I want them to feel like working for change is part of it,” Sebastian explains. “In order for them to have happiness, they need to help move the needle.”

“I think that often people look at genre romance as escapist,” Sebastian explains about slipping progressive politics in between romance and sex scenes. “But I think that the definition of escapism has broadened recently, so that it includes more people, which is good, because it also includes people working for change.” The 1950s, she points out, are “inherently a pretty bleak part of history,” so writing a story set then that didn’t grapple with historical issues wouldn’t have felt right. Ultimately, she doesn’t think it’s that different from contemporary romance in that regard. “Twenty-twenty-three is not a terrific time to be a queer person in America,” she points out. “Yet people are finding happiness and writing books set in 2023 America. So this book in the ’50s really resonates with today.”

Writing about a much more recent time period than she usually does gave Sebastian some stress about historical accuracy. “I was worried that I was going to be pinned down by like, ‘Oh my god, was it really raining that day?'” she explains. She even found a 1961 map of Greenwich Village from the New York Public Library and annotated it with where Nick and Andy spent their time, including where “the good bagel place” would have been. But Sebastian said it was “refreshing” to look at a time period that has so much of a paper trail. She also had two reliable primary sources: her parents, who are native New Yorkers. “I could just be like, ‘Could you really do a subway transfer this way?'” she says. “There were a whole bunch of things that are fresh enough in people’s memory that you’ve got to get it right.”

But also for that same reason, they’re very easy to find out the answer to. “You don’t have to shut your eyes and imagine Regency London,” she says. “It’s actually known what that block looks like, I know where [Nick’s] apartment is.”

As Sebastian has published more and more queer historical romances, her attitude toward those who might challenge the presence of queer people — especially ones who get happy endings — in stories about the past has changed. “I used to include detailed historical notes in some of my books, so that way transphobes or whatever wouldn’t have any ammunition,” she says. “But I’m not writing my book for white supremacists. If they read my book, and they’re like, ‘That’s fake,’ that’s really a them problem.”

One of the things Sebastian found most surprising in her research was that there was coverage of queer people in 1950s newspapers. In the book, she mentions that the New York Post would run stories about queer men being entrapped in bars. “This was something that people generally believed to be deeply unethical,” she says. “There was a vast well of sympathy.”

Even in The New York Times there was coverage of queer people, she says, though it was very negative. “You can’t believe that queer people didn’t exist in the ’50s, when people were writing about the problem of queer people existing in the ’50s,” she explains. There were roundups of photos of queer men so you can see what clothing was trendy at the time. And then there are “scathing editorials” about the “huge problem” of homosexuality. “If you’re going to call it a huge problem, I’m going to believe it. I’m going to believe there are, there are teeming masses of people demanding queer liberation in 1962,” she says.

Speaking of historical events, baseball (and hating the Yankees) is a big part of Nick and Andy’s life, and Sebastian spills that her next connected novel will follow a sports reporter who falls for a member of New York’s newest expansion team. They’re not exactly the Mets — who formed in 1962 — but they’re similar. I can’t wait.

“We Could Be So Good” is in bookstores now.