If you look at the image above, that was basically me for most of my life. I wasn’t just indifferent to the holidays; I was a card-carrying member of the “I Hate Christmas” club. I was the guy rolling his eyes at the first notes of a carol, the one muttering under his breath while everyone else was roasting chestnuts. I genuinely despised the season. But if you know me now, you know that script has flipped. I’ve somehow crossed the line from “bah humbug” to actually humming along with the radio.
It wasn’t a random personality quirk; there’s a reason I hated it. Let’s be real: my family of origin was, to put it mildly, completely fucked up. It was a train wreck. Being gay on top of that definitely didn’t help matters; it just added a layer of isolation to an already volatile mix.
Then I spent years working retail as a makeup artist. If you’ve never worked a cosmetics counter in December, you haven’t seen the true face of humanity. I was trapped in a mall, drowning in a sea of aggressive shoppers demanding the perfect shade of red lipstick like their lives depended on it, all while the same five holiday songs played on an endless, maddening loop. The sensory overload of perfume, panic, and incessant jingling bells didn’t just annoy me—it completely wrecked the season. By the time I clocked out, the last thing I wanted to see was tinsel; I just wanted silence.
For a long time, the holidays weren’t a celebration—they were something I had to survive. But eventually, I escaped that hell. I got out, I built a life of my own, and most importantly, I met Ricardo.
Ricardo and I had a rollercoaster romance—off again, on again, spanning years—but through all the turbulence, he was undeniably the love of my life.
Then came my move to Mexico, and shortly after, the world fell apart. Ric passed away during the Covid epidemic, and I was absolutely gutted. The silence he left behind was deafening. But the following Christmas, sitting with that grief, I made a choice. I decided I needed to change my attitude, not just about the holidays, but about how I was processing everything.
I turned to the one thing that always makes sense to me: writing. I channeled that energy into a novella called Making It Glitter. The irony isn’t lost on me—after years of despising my time in retail, I wrote a romance about two guys falling in love while working at the mall, one dressed as an elf and the other as Santa. It was my way of taking the setting of my nightmares and turning it into a place of love.
Writing is what changed me.
Now that I’m away from retail and family drama, the holidays have become enjoyable for the first time. I even have a playlist of holiday music I’ve been listening to while working on my next holiday themed romance, The Naughty List.
I’ve been a huge fan of romantic comedies my entire life, and The Naughty series if a result.
First there’s The Naughty Professor, my gay version of The Nutty Professor. Coming the day after Christmas is The Naughty List, my first snowed in romance. This has been so much fun to write, and I daresay it’s much more romantic than I expected it to be. It kind of reminds me of one Christmas Ric and I were trapped in a cheap motel in Pennsylvania. We’d been driving back to Richmond from his family’s place in Ohio, accompanied by our chihuahua, Pepe. It was cozy, warm, and… I’ll keep the rest of that memory to myself. *wink*
Preorder The Naughty List now from Amazon, and lock in the sale price of 3.99. The price goes up to 4.99 on release day.
If you haven’t giggled your way through Making It Glitter yet, buy it now from your favorite retailer. Have a wonderful holiday season!
Ian O. Lewis and Luke Jameson 