My name is Janice Jarrell. I’m a retired IT tech and grandmother living in Port Angeles, Washington, in a house that looks out over the Olympic Mountains. I have two children, three grandsons, and I’ve been writing gay romance since I was twelve years old—only back then it wasn’t called “gay romance.” In the fifties, it was worth your life to admit to being gay, let alone confess to being a girl who constantly fantasized about relationships between men. I didn’t even know what a homosexual was. I just knew I loved the idea of boy-on-boy romance. I was that kid on a farm in a tiny Michigan village, watching Tom Corbett and his Space Cadets and all those guys on Combat and thinking: there’s something going on here.
I wrote slash fanfiction for about 30 years and produced over 300 stories—some a hundred-word drabble, some sprawling novel-length series. The feedback I received from readers, and the community that formed around those stories, became the creative home I’d been searching for my entire life. I still bless the internet for leading me to that artistic oasis.
Love’s Magic was my first step into creating my own original characters, and from it grew the interconnected worlds of my Revolutionary Heart and Fearless Heart series, featuring Colin, Joshua, David, Nate, Trent, Jeff, and the rest of the gang. Those books—along with short story, companion collections like Trial Runs, Glory Days, Relevant Justice, Heart’s Treasure, and Rainbows Still Glow—follow these men through love stories that are messy, hard-won, and always, always worth it. I’ve also written stand-alone tales like Under the Midnight Sky and Beyond the Rainbow: Stories from Camp Pride, and I’m currently working on Dark Justice, the first book in my Unbreakable Vow series.
Most of my novels and short-story companion collections are available as audiobooks on Audible and other retailers, bringing my characters to life in a whole new way for listeners who love to experience stories on the go.
It’s been an amazing thing to watch the gay community’s growth over these past decades. In many ways my own journey has echoed theirs, and I’m deeply grateful to the activists who fought to win the rights and recognition the LGBTQ+ community has always deserved. I’m equally grateful to the gay romance community—readers, authors, publishers, and promoters—who are making my retirement years the most creative of my life.
When I’m not writing, I’m traveling, walking, knitting, crocheting, and generally plotting more trouble for my characters. And for the record: no matter what I put them through, I am a firm believer in HEA.
