Who am I?
My nom de plume is Cayden J Thomas. I’m a genderqueer author of MM romance of varying subgenres. I’m also an award-winning visual artist.
Growing up, I learned love was painful, so I spent a lot of time in my imagination and telling stories to escape my reality. In high school, I met a guy who changed all of that. He slowly taught me that love shouldn’t be painful; it could and should be as magical as any fairytale. After 25 years of marriage, we’re still going strong. We currently live with our two almost-grown children, our dog, and a clowder of cats in the southern part of the US. Yes, you read that right; I am a proud, Southern, genderqueer liberal. Bless your heart! I know that sounds like the beginning of a joke, but I promise it’s not.
What (or really, who) inspires me?
People often ask me “Why write romance?” Well, dear reader, that answer is simple: my knight in beat-up armor. As in any good romance, my husband and I have survived our share of conflicts and tragedies, and we haven’t always come out unscathed. My husband has gone to battle for and against me more times than I care to admit, but he has always had my best interests at heart. He loves me unconditionally just as I am, even when I can’t love myself. Especially when I can’t love myself. So, the long answer to the question ‘Why romance’ is because I want the inner souls of other broken people to know that Prince Charmings really do exist, but they’re generally wearing armor scarred from battle. And those knights—the ones in beat-up armor—are the kind you want because they know a thing or two about slaying dragons and living happily ever after.
But why MM?
I’ve always felt like I was born in the wrong body. I grew up being the biggest tomboy in any of the many schools I attended, and I preferred male friends to female friends. I even tried (and failed) to join the junior varsity football team in high school; no one wanted a girl on the school team. I was grown and married before I found out there was a term for how I felt: genderqueer. But by this point, I had a wonderful life with my adoring cis-het husband, who had never cared that I wasn’t the most feminine woman ever. He accepted me for who I was, regardless of how I identified, and I wasn’t willing to risk losing him over my gender. Writing MM romance became my way of living vicariously through my characters, setting me free. Perhaps in another life, I might have transitioned, but in this life, I’m happy just the way I am, with my they/them pronouns.
