I grew up thinking being gay was a choice, which was so much more comforting than thinking I was born wrong. If I had subconsciously chosen to like boys, I could switch back to “normal” before any of my friends noticed that I was different, before they would take it into their own hands to straighten me out.
Being gay, of course, was never a choice. Many make this assumption, which never made much sense to me as I got older: Why would I subject myself to judgment? Why would I design such a complicated life for myself? Why would anyone when being normal is straight-up easier?
These are questions that threw me into writing More Happy Than Not, latching onto a speculative element to help me explore a character, sixteen-year-old Aaron Soto, who no longer wanted to be gay and could rewrite his history—and his life—with the help of a memory manipulation service.
I hope you will relate to Aaron’s journey even if you’re not gay yourself because his journey is ultimately about the pursuit of happiness, which is universal. If you’ve ever suffered through a tragedy you wished you could forget, you may empathize with Aaron’s story. While we can’t always engineer our own happy endings, we can learn how to be more happy than not with the cards we’ve been dealt.
(More) Happy reading,
