Episode 467 – Off to the Airport with Jeffrey K. Davenport

Nov 18, 2024

Jeff & Will talk about Jeff’s new holiday romance Taking a Shot at Love and recommend the movie The Holiday Exchange. 

After Jeff reviews Meet Me in the Sky by Jeffrey K. Davenport, Jeffrey joins Jeff to discuss this rom-com that follows Billy and Michael, two stranded travelers whose unexpected six-day stay in the airport becomes a journey of mishaps, fun dates, and slow-burn connection. Jeffrey reveals his inspirations behind this unique setting, the things he imagined for his characters to do while they’re stuck, and the shift from his debut thriller to the new romance. He also teases what his future writing plans are.

Look for the next episode of Big Gay Fiction Podcast on Monday, December 2.

Remember, you can listen and follow the podcast anytime on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube and audio file download.

Show Notes

Here are the things we talk about in this episode. Please note, these links include affiliate links for which we may make a small commission at no extra cost to you should you make a purchase. These links are current at the time the episode premieres, however links are subject to change.

Transcript 

This transcript was made possible by our community on Patreon. You can get information on how to join them at patreon.com/biggayfictionpodcast.

Intro

Will: Coming up on this episode, we’re off to the airport with author Jeffrey K. Davenport as we talk about his new romance, “Meet Me in the Sky.”

Jeff: Welcome to episode 467 of the Big Gay Fiction Podcast, the show for avid readers and passionate fans of queer romance fiction. I’m Jeff, and here with me, as always, is my co-host and husband. It’s Will.

Will: Hello, Rainbow Romance Reader. It is great to have you back here for another episode of the show.

Jeff: As always, this podcast is brought to you in part by our remarkable community on Patreon. If you’d like more information about what we offer to patrons, including the opportunity to ask questions to our guests, just like Sol does in this very episode, go to patreon.com/biggayfictionpodcast.

Will: So Jeff, I know you’ve got some news to share because you recently released a holiday story.

Jeff: Yes, I did. Let me tell you all about “Taking a Shot at Love.” Best Friends. Rival teams. Unexpected romance for the holidays. When pro hockey players Miles Robinson and Cole Ackerman hit the ice, their competition is fierce. But away from the rink, their friendship runs deeper than any rivalry. This holiday season, a canceled flight leaves Cole stranded with Miles during Christmas and Hanukkah, reigniting old feelings that both have kept buried for years. As laughter, memories, and the magic of the holidays bring them closer than ever, a Christmas Eve kiss changes everything. Can two best friends risk their hearts and take a shot at the love they’ve always wanted?

I bet they can. This is a romance after all.

This heartwarming “Hockey Hearts” holiday novella is packed with competitive banter, sweet family moments, Lego gifts, baked goods, and a sweet HEA.

Now, “Taking a Shot at Love” made its first appearance last year in the “Pucking Around” anthology, but this is its first time to be available as an ebook that’s part of the “Hockey Hearts” series. This edition also features an epilogue that finds Miles surprising Cole on Valentine’s Day.

You can find “Taking a Shot at Love” at your favorite ebook retailer and listeners to the Big Gay Fiction Podcast can also get 25% off their entire order if they get “Taking a Shot at Love,” along with any other eBooks from my online store, using the link biggayfictionpodcast.com/shot. Of course, you can also find the links for all of this in the show notes for this very episode. I hope you’ll spend part of your holidays with Miles and Cole and that you enjoy their story as much as I did writing it.

Viewing Recommendation: The Holiday Exchange

Will: So before we get to this episode’s author interview, I wanted to talk about Christmas movies.

Jeff: Yay. Christmas movies.

Will: And if you’re like us and you’ve watched the Cameron Diaz, Kate Winslet house swap classic, “The Holiday,” and thought, hmm, I wish this were just a little bit gayer. Ooh, I’m so excited because I have got a treat for you. “The Holiday Exchange” is a very sweet, very queer take on the time honored Christmas trope, and I pretty much loved every second of it.

In this movie, Wilde is at a professional and emotional crossroads. He’s just sold his tech company and he’s broken up with his boyfriend. Oliver is a divorce attorney and he is, um, inconveniently a romantic at heart. Both need a change and decide to swap houses for Christmas. Oliver heads to LA and meets the devastatingly attractive self-help author of the book that he’s currently reading, while Wilde lands in Europe and meets Oliver’s devastatingly handsome cousin, a nice guy actor. And through a series of cute dates and holiday activities, love blossoms.

I thought the middle part of the movie, the “getting to know you” relationship section, was really nicely done and made the romance for both of our main characters a little more grounded and believable than your average Christmas movie.

But as we know, eventually vacations must come to an end, and our lovesick heroes must decide their romantic futures. Now, of course, this isn’t a spoiler, all of it ends well with everyone gathering in Wilde’s LA home to toast in the New Year and the possibilities of brand new love.

Let’s talk about the actors. Taylor Frey and Rick Cosnett as Wilde and Oliver are both really wonderful, super charming, as is the rest of the cast. Daniel Garcia and Samer Salem are appropriately dreamy as the main love interests. And there are a few fun cameos as well from the likes of Kyle Richards, Ashley Fink and Nick Adams.

Look, let’s be real for a second. This movie is not reinventing the wheel. The expected rom-com tropes are strictly adhered to. And if you’re not into Christmas house swap shenanigans, then this is not the movie that’s going to change your mind. But if you’re like us and revel in the festive cliches, and holiday schmalz, and the sight of pretty characters falling in love, then the holiday exchange is a colorful and fun and sweet way to celebrate the Christmas season. Definitely worth adding to your Christmas watch list.

Jeff: I loved it so much for the very reason that you said. All of that, “get to know you” stuff, all of that stuff that sits right in the middle of the movie. I could have done with another half hour of that because each couple was so wonderful in terms of the holiday things they were doing while they were getting to know each other. And yes, the actors, all of them just superb. This was the movie that kicked off our holiday movie watch season. If this is like what the season has to bring to us, it’s gonna be a really good season of the holiday movies.

Will: “The Holiday Exchange” is available on most platforms and can be watched for free on Amazon Prime Video and other streamers like Tubi.

Book Recommendation: Meet Me in the Sky by Jeffrey K. Davenport

Jeff: I wanna talk just a little bit about “Meet Me in the Sky” before we get into the interview with Jeffrey Davenport.

I found out about this book back in episode 456 when Frederick Smith shouted out the fact that this book was coming and that he was excited for it. It immediately was something I went to look up and find out what this book was about. And as I read the description, I’m like, I must read this book as soon as I can get my hands on it. And it was not a disappointment.

What we have here are two people who have arrived to John F. Kennedy Airport, needing to go off onto their respective places. Billy is heading to his sister’s destination wedding in Mexico, and he is also the wedding planner so he needs to get there on time to help with all of the ceremony stuff that’s going to happen. And then there’s Michael who is on his way to a funeral in Ohio for his father who he’s been estranged from. There’s also a hurricane approaching New York City, reminiscent of two hurricanes that I experienced while I lived in the city. And that hurricane actually gets there faster than it’s supposed to, and these two can’t get out on their flights and they’re stuck in the airport.

Personally, I can’t imagine more of a hellscape than that being trapped in an airport, particularly JFK, which is one of my least favorite airports to go through. But these two, as they arrive at the airport, they have an encounter at the ticket counter as they’re trying to check in and check baggage. They have another encounter at the TSA checkpoint, which actually has them restrained and held by TSA for a little bit. It’s really a wonderful like “meet hate” between these two. But then as they’re both stuck at the airport, they start to hang around each other, get to know each other, start to care about each other a little bit, but it takes a long time to get there because they’re chafing against each other for quite a while.

They’ve both arrived with a pretty decent amount of baggage. Billy is not totally happy with his life right now. He is having a lot of bad luck. He’s nursing a broken heart. He’s actually about to get divorced from his husband. Somehow he manages a sunny disposition that is mostly facade about a lot of it. But he’s on a mission to get to that wedding and make it pull off without a hitch even as his own feelings are flying all over the place where love is concerned. And then Michael is having to deal with all this stuff about having to go speak at this funeral that he doesn’t really wanna speak at. He’s kind of been goaded into it coming and delivering a eulogy for a father that he is massively estranged from. They’re both kind of dealing with where they are in life. But as they chip away at some of this stuff and end up hanging around each other and going through the storm in the airport, and honestly, to the best that they can, make the most of being stuck in the small city that is one of these terminals at JFK. You know, they certainly have a lot of food around that they can pick from, just snacks to sitting down at places to eat.

They have so many delightful, let’s just call them dates because that’s kind of what they are as they hang out in the airport for days, waiting for the flights to get going again. And as they start to peel back the layers on each other, there’s so many heartfelt conversations about where they are in life, what’s going on. But it’s also spread out so well because each of them keeps holding a little bit back, but at the same time, Billy is starting to help Michael come to terms with what he is supposed to go do. And Michael is starting to help Billy, come out on the other side of the heartbreak that he’s felt.

There’s also some really hot hookups that happened through this book. I’m not gonna tell you where they happen because I don’t really wanna spoil that surprise for you. The ways that Jeffrey gives these two moments within an airport to go off and have these little mini hookups. Some of them happened very organically. Some of them happened just coming out of the most insane circumstances that you can imagine. It was really fun to read that. And for all of the baggage these two are carrying, the book is also really surprisingly light in a lot of ways.

It really threads that rom-com needle where often, you know, romcom can give us a lot of fun and funny while also really tugging on the emotional heartstrings. And Jeffrey really finds that balance so well. It was really wonderful to read. And the grand gesture at the end, oh my gosh, it was better than I could have even hoped for as I was trying to like wrap my head around how this was going to be able to wrap itself up and be able to come in, no pun intended, although maybe there is a pun intended, come in for a good landing.

I do hope that you’ll pick up “Meet Me in the Sky” because I think you’ll really enjoy the journey that it will take you on.

And now it’s time for you to hear from Jeffrey Davenport. It was such a delight talking to him to find out how he came up with Billy and Michael’s story and how he went about setting up this forced proximity romance in an airport. Now “Meet Me in the Sky” is also Jeffrey’s first romance after writing a thriller as his debut novel. So, we talk about what led him to romance, as well as what his plans are to go back and forth between writing thrillers and romance.

Jeffrey K. Davenport Interview

Jeff: Jeffrey, welcome to the podcast. I’m so excited to have you here.

Jeffrey: Thank you so much. I’m so happy to be here. This is super exciting. I’m glad to meet you, for one, and to be able to talk about “Meet Me in the Sky,” which is exciting.

Jeff: I love this book so, so much. I was so excited when Fred Smith even mentioned it that it was coming when I talked to him back in June, and then I read the blurb. I’m like, “Well, I have to read this book. Forced proximity in an airport. I can’t even imagine.”

Jeffrey: Right? Yeah. Fred’s fantastic. He’s so good at uplifting other people in the community, and so welcoming and fantastic, and a great writer also. But I’m so happy that people have been reading the blurb and been like, “I have got to read the story. I’ve got to see what these two are doing in an airport for six days. Like, how does that even work?”

Jeff: I can’t even imagine being stuck in any airport, especially JFK, for more than a few hours, not to mention days.

Jeffrey: Right, days at a time. I feel like that’s everybody’s worst fear, right behind not being able to get on their flight for whatever reason. But having to be stuck in an airport, isolated for that long. The thought of it literally gives me chills. I can’t—I cannot stay there for that long.

Jeff: Yeah, I would’ve gone a little bit insane, I think. We are jumping the gun just a little bit. Tell everybody what “Meet Me in the Sky” is about and this love story between Billy and Michael.

Jeffrey: Absolutely. So, “Meet Me in the Sky” is a romantic comedy that takes place around Billy and Michael. Michael is on his way to his estranged father’s funeral, which he’s not thrilled about, obviously. And Billy is on his way to his sister’s wedding in Mexico, while he’s going through the final stages of his divorce. So we’ve got a little bit of a “I hate love, I love love” kind of battle going on in his head.

They meet under not the best circumstances. They get into a tussle with TSA. They run into each other in the security line, and it’s not great. But as we go on, we see that they start to bond, learn more about each other, and become each other’s rock as they’re stuck in this airport for multiple reasons—being a hurricane, and staffing, and all kinds of things go wrong. We just kind of see them lean on each other and work through the traumas they’ve both brought to the table.

Jeff: It’s interesting how you had them stuck there. I was thinking about this—thinking back to the time I lived in New York. If I’m stuck at the airport, would I go home or stay? And you stay because there’s always that idea that, oh, there’s a flight right now, and you need to get on it this minute to leave, and you’re not going to get back to the airport.

Jeffrey: Right, exactly. And that was one of my… I guess you could say it was almost a plot hole for me when I was starting out. I said, “Why wouldn’t they just go home?” They live in New York. It’s not like they’d have to make a huge commute. So, I had to make it so they both desperately wanted to get to their destinations so bad that they were willing to stay in the airport as long as it took to get where they needed to go.

And we have a little bit of back and forth with Michael at the beginning. Like I said, he’s begrudgingly going to this funeral of his estranged father. so he has a little battle at the beginning, “Maybe I should just go home. I really don’t want to go to this thing anyway. I don’t want to be a part of this” So we watch that unfold. But, yeah, that was a big thing for me—figuring out how to get them to stay there and not just give up and go home.

Jeff: Yeah, it made total sense because they want to get where they’re going. There’s a clock on getting where they’re going.

Jeffrey: Right.

Jeff: And the stress that causes on itself.

Sol, who’s a member of our Patreon community, has a few questions about this book because Sol read it, loved it, and was like, “Yes, I have questions.” And the first one is exactly one that I have too. It’s like, what inspired you to set a book in an airport?

Jeffrey: I think at the time I was doing a lot of traveling, and I was in and out of the airport constantly. Mostly, I was coming to New York. I was still living in Atlanta, and I was coming up to New York with my sister. We would come up and visit every other month or so. She lives in Houston, I was in Atlanta, so that was our home base. We would come up for a weekend in New York every couple of months. And I was thinking about it, and I was already considering writing a rom-com. I think my very first thought was that OG rom-com, running through the airport and the romance that encapsulates that.

And I thought to myself, what if you were just in that airport—you couldn’t go anywhere else? I think that kind of plays a big role in a lot of people’s heads when we get to the airport. It’s like, I could meet some random stranger and fall in love because that airport experience is that time where you are seeing more people than you would on a day-to-day basis.

So, the possibility of running into somebody that you could have a little meet-cute—or not-so-cute, as we see in “Meet Me in the Sky”—and striking up something that you never thought could happen. That’s what really drove me to write this story. You kind of meet somebody in the strangest of ways, just out of luck, and realize that you guys have a lot more in common than you think.

Jeff: I think I characterized Billy and Michael’s first meeting as a “meet-hate” between the ticketing counter and the security checkpoint—they were not liking each other.

Jeffrey: At all! Not at all. We deal with a lot of Billy’s anxiety in those first couple of pages. He loses his phone, gets a text from his ex. He is trying to get to his terminal, and the Uber driver is all over the place, not going where he needs to go. His anxiety’s already high, and I wanted him to just be a disaster upon meeting Michael. And Michael’s like, “You are way too much of a person for me right now. I’ve got too much going on in my own head, and you are just all over the place.” I had to have them meet under the worst circumstances for each other.

Jeff: I was very empathetic to Billy because I am also one of those people who needs to get to the airport really early, especially if I’m in New York or someplace that’s not home. I know how my home airport works really well. But if I’m somewhere else where I actually can’t come back home if something goes wrong, it’s like, I must be there early. I need to get through security and be near the gate.

Jeffrey: Exactly. I’m the exact same way, a hundred percent. Everybody thinks I’m crazy all the time because they’re like, “Why are you at the airport four hours early?” I need to be situated where I need to be way before my flight. Who knows what will happen? You never know what could go wrong, and that was a big inspiration for the book—let’s take everything that could possibly go wrong and have it go wrong.

Jeff: Yeah, it certainly did.

Sol was also wondering if you’ve had bad experiences with TSA that maybe inspired the book a little bit as well in terms of that scene.

Jeffrey: I really haven’t. I’ve never really had an issue with TSA. I see it all the time, I feel like. But I’ve never really had much of an issue. I also thought it was kind of interesting seeing how we do security in America versus everywhere else. I think that was also something that I wanted to play on, how seriously we take security at airports, which we see at the beginning of the book.

I made a joke with a friend of mine… We went to Europe last year, and the ease of going through security there was like… I’ve never seen anything like it before in my life. We got from the front door to our gate in five minutes flat, which was insane to me. So, I wanted to play up the big security clearance deal we make here in America for obvious reasons. But, I thought that was so interesting and really wanted to play into that a lot, to just throw the guys off a little bit more. Just to have that one more thing to toss into their day, a run-in with TSA.

Jeff: They had so much in that first hour or so at the airport.

Jeffrey: That kind of plays into me wondering why wouldn’t they just go home. At some point, you have to admit defeat. And all those things going wrong and all that stress, they had gone through. For me, I would’ve been like, “I’ve got to reset. I’ve got to go back home. I’ll fly out tomorrow; I can’t do this today.” But I had to keep them there. I had to keep them there so they could find each other and find themselves a little bit.

Jeff: How was it in terms of having things for them to do, but having to keep it all inside the terminal and make it all really make sense? I mean, there was nothing in there that I went, “Really, we’re doing that?” It all really hung together well. But how was that for you as a writer, to find all those things to do over six days?

Jeffrey: Yeah, that was something that was kind of scary for me going into it. I didn’t want to be repetitive. I didn’t want them to be stagnant for too long. So, I literally got out my notebook and wrote down everything I could possibly have them do in this airport. I had to be a little creative as well because there were things that weren’t necessarily in certain terminals or even in JFK at all.

I was like, you know what? I just have to make it my own. I’ve got to take some things from LaGuardia, take some things from Hartsfield-Jackson, take some things from Houston. Put those things into this airport, and just move them around a little bit. I do have this desire to make things incredibly accurate, so that was something I had to kind of peel off from myself and move forward in the idea that this doesn’t have to be exactly as it is in our world. We can be creative. We can get outside of the box. We can move some things around.

So, you know, a couple of things that came to mind very early were their moment in the elevator, the bookstore, the chapel—that was actually one of the very first things I thought of. But it was fun to be able to… Once I was able to take that jacket off of trying to go for accuracy and just did what served the story, things flowed so much better. It was freeing to be able to just do whatever I wanted and put them where they needed to be.

But, realistically, I just let them guide me to where they wanted to go, whatever made sense next. So let’s see how we can make that work. And I’m glad that it translated well. I’m glad that it seemed to be a bit seamless, which is nice.

Jeff: Yeah, it really was. I mean, at least everything, even if it doesn’t exist in a JFK terminal, it made sense in an airport. And the fact that you had a bookstore woven into it… because so many bookstores and places like that in an airport. I was like, “Yes, a bookstore!”

Jeffrey: Yeah, definitely. That was one of the first ones that I wanted them to have a bit of a tender moment. I believe that’s really the first time they have that real emotional connection. They kind of befriend each other earlier on, and there are some things that are going on before that, but that’s the first moment that they really see a deeper level of each other. That was something that was important to me. I wanted them to have that moment in the bookstore, just seemed like it made the most sense.

Jeff: There was a couple of things you did, especially early on, with them just getting to know each other, whether it was picking a T-shirt out or talking about books. I mean, books are always a good thing to talk about, but doing that thing with the T-shirts—I thought that was super clever because you got to find out a little bit more about them by just what they’d pick off of the airport tourism rack, essentially.

Jeffrey: Yeah, that was fun. That was a very fun scene to write. I liked that they have a moment in there where they’re just walking around the store, and the banter between them in that moment. They’re just having fun. And I feel like their guard… this is really the first time their guards come down with each other.

And, like you said, you get to see a little bit more of who they are. They’re talking about what they do for work. They’re talking about their families a little bit. You just kind of see their humor come out a lot more in that time as well. And they see it with each other, which, I don’t know, I feel like that was a big bonding moment for them. To be able to have that moment where the stress, and the issues of their lives they’re dealing with in that moment are just kind of gone. You just have them experiencing each other, which is nice.

Jeff: Yeah, it’s almost like they were on a date somewhere besides the airport.

Jeffrey: Right, exactly. And I think one of the things… maybe Michael says that later on in the book, “How do we even do a first date when we’ve had the longest first date in history?” So that is kind of how I thought about it as well in that through those days, this is essentially the longest first date ever. They just learn so much about each other.

Jeff: They’re not really separated because you kind of want to hang out with people you already kind of know in a situation like this. So they just keep being together anyway.

Jeffrey: Yeah, yeah. They do find themselves glued to each other. I think once they connect, once they kind of deal with the whole TSA issue and let bygones be bygones of the transgressions they had at the beginning. They’re just locked in at that point. They’re comfortable enough to be locked in.

I wanted them to have their transgressions, have their little angry banter in that moment. And then I wanted to go ahead and create a friendship between them because, in that moment, that’s all you have is that one person that you’ve met, that you can just hold onto in this moment of chaos when you’re stuck in the middle of nowhere, essentially.

Jeff: Where did Billy and Michael come from for you? They’re such wonderfully rich characters with so much going on. What were their individual inspirations as you started to piece this story together?

Jeffrey: So for me, a lot of the time when it comes to creating characters, I’ll have a vague idea of who they are and what they’re going through. My first thought was, I wanted these two guys to be stuck in the airport and I wanted them to fall in love eventually. But I was trying to figure out what exactly is under the hood of both of them.

For Billy, I wanted him to be jovial and upbeat, but I wanted something else to be a hindrance of his heart because that’s really what leads him throughout his life—following his heart. And him going to a wedding, divorce just made the most sense for me that he’s battling those feelings of “love stabbed me in the back” while trying to celebrate love. I really was into that juxtaposition of those two things.

But, also, when I’m creating these characters, like I said, I’ll have a vague idea, but it’s really the dialogue that’ll do it for me. When I’m writing, I’m thinking about what they would say in this moment. That gives me a clear vision of who they are what their personalities are. It’s easier for me that way to then go back and say, “Okay, this is what…” That’s when I realize I know who these characters are and when I’m writing something, and I said, “Well, Billy wouldn’t say that. Michael wouldn’t say it that way.” That’s when I say, “Okay, fantastic. I know exactly who these people are,” and I can go back and really dive into it a little bit more.

With Michael, I wanted him to be more reserved. One of the first things I thought about was him being a history buff. That was the little quirk I wanted to give him. So, you’ll see throughout the book that he has random facts that he pulls out of his hat. I thought it was fun and just gave him a fun little thing that existed that Billy finds really cute. And I really wanted him to have something that was long term, that’s been building up for him. And so that kind of led me to his father being estranged, leaving his family when he is eight years old, and starting a new family. And having Michael battle those feelings of “You weren’t there for my entire life for the most part. And you started a new family, kind of erased me, my mother and my brother, from your entire life started completely anew. And now you’re gone. And I don’t really ever… I’m never gonna have that closure.”

It was enriching to be able to have him explore those feelings. I feel like that’s so complicated to have someone that you have so much resentment for pass away. But you still have that underlying feeling of… we really don’t know what it is. It’s a mix of, is it love? Is it that I missed out on something? Is it just the human emotion of someone passing away? And so I really wanted Michael to be able to dive into that and have him just kind of go through the motions of uncovering those feelings and kind of getting to the bottom of how do you feel about your father who left your entire family and is now deceased. What are those feelings? Are they incorrect? Are they how he should be feeling? Are they something that he just thinks he should be feeling? And of course the answer to that is, there’s no wrong way to feel about it. Which is, I think, what he has to work through, throughout the book to get there.

But they were just two complicated people. That was really the brunt of it, I wanted these two complicated people to able to find each other and maybe take a couple of these strings out, be able to untangle what’s going on in their own heads a little bit for each other.

Jeff: Yeah, I would say they actually found each other at the right moments for themselves because they helped each other, kind of almost, release some of what was going on in their lives. I mean, still much more for each of them to do, but those moments kind of released that for them.

And to have the history buff hang out with the writer… How much research did you have to do for your historical facts, or did those happen to be one that you actually had?

Jeffrey: I didn’t have, I don’t think, any of them just on hand. I had to do some research for sure. I would have an idea of what I wanted to say. And then I would have to go back and see exactly what I wanted because I wanted him to have almost like a photographic memory. Like he knows everything to a T. So I’d have to go back and get very specific. And I want him to literally be able to pull it right out of his brain, like it was nothing.

So the fact about baseball, I think it was who had the most home runs in baseball history. And there’s a quote about Teddy Roosevelt that he pulls out, a Malcolm X quote that he pulls out. And I just love that he just had those all on hand. That is not me at all. Whatever the antithesis of that is, that is what I am. I have short term memory loss. It’s very, very bad. Me and Michael have that completely… we’re different in that way a hundred percent. But it was fun to be able to do that. And it was fun to be able to have him be able to do that.

Jeff: One of my favorite quirks between the two of them that came up a couple times was backpack organization.

Jeffrey: Yes. Mikey has a jungle in his backpack for sure. And Billy first sees it and he is disgusted by how unorganized he is. Because you meet Billy and you realize that he is very, I’d say he’s pretty type A. And he is got his things in order. He shows up to the airport in a full suit, essentially. He is, I’ve got to do this, got to do this, got to do this. And for Michael being so disorganized, that’s immediately how Billy knows that their bags end up getting switched. He’s looking at it and he’s like, “that’s certainly not my bag.” That it couldn’t be, I would never, create that.

I did enjoy having Michael kind of walk Billy through how his mind works when they kind of first meet, upon having their flights being delayed and having him kind of just walk him through how he exists in this world. And it was a time to have them be very different, but see that they also had a lot of things in common. It was fun to be able to have those familiarities rise up and have them both notice it at the same time. You see that spark between them, which is very nice.

Jeff: I felt bad for them in terms of the people that they have who are waiting for them.

Jeffrey: Yeah.

Jeff: I felt like both parties, Billy’s sister and Michael’s, I guess, stepsister, are just like, “I don’t care what’s happening at the airport. Why aren’t you here?” It was interesting to me to have that as essentially the two major support characters because there was no sympathy there for the situation, for the most part. Or talking to them about, I’ve kind of met this guy, which is usually a cornerstone in a rom-com and a romance.

How was it to have that kind of antagonism from their, essentially, besties or at least the people they were talking to the most. I don’t think you could call Michael’s stepsister, a bestie, but…

Jeffrey: Well, especially for Michael, I really wanted to dive into his relationship with his sister cause they’re not very close. His sister was raised by his father, fully. And they have two very different visions of who this man was. For her, he was a rock star dad, from start to finish. The moment she was born to the day he died, he was a fantastic father. For Michael, he stepped out when he was eight years old and rarely saw him after that. So, he’s had two decades of resentment built up.

I really wanted to have them kind of battle that out. It’s very underlying at first until it rises to the top. I really wanted the frustration of her wanting him to be there, him kind of not even wanting to go at all, play a role in what is really the issue between the two of them. She is putting this man on a pedestal and Michael finds a lot of resentment in that. And he is very angry about that. And I don’t think he realized how angry he is until they get to this point where they’re having these conversations about him making it to the funeral. It’s not ever really about that. It’s more of, she wants to create this picture perfect moment for them all. And he’s kind of like it’s not picture perfect. It won’t be picture perfect.

And with Billy, that was one of the most fun interactions to write was Billy with his family because they’re so eccentric. And you can kind of see how they all fall in line with how he acts as well. But even they are like a little bit much for him. But it was fun to have them all calling on Michael’s phone to talk to him and see where he was. And I really wanted them to put his mind at ease. cause they were kind of pushy, but they were also like we’ve got it from here. take your time, get here when you get here. And they’re on this beautiful resort in Mexico. They’re, like, you’re fine. Do your thing. Have fun with this guy that you’ve now met in the airport. Bring him to the wedding if you want. But it was fun to be able to watch them put him at ease while also giving him horrible anxiety about the entire situation. But that’s just who he is.

But yeah, it was fun. It was fun to be able to incorporate them in this story. And Michael, with his friends, they have a little group chat and they’re texting and talking about Billy. That was really fun to have their input thrown in there as well.

Jeff: And I love the airline worker who was always at the ticketing counter at whatever gate they were trying to get to. She was a delight when she figured out that these two guys are doing the best they can in this moment.

Jeffrey: Exactly. I pictured Addison, who is one of the gate agents there, I pictured her kind of in the way that you would have a gag in a sitcom where you have that one character who just does everything. You go to a new bar or you go to the bowling alley or you go to a dealership and they’re working at each one. I always thought that was a fun little gag that would happen a lot in a lot of sitcoms, and I wanted to emulate that with her where she’s just constantly popping up in different places. And she’s always, she’s like I’ve got to afford my apartment in Green Point. I’ve got to work. I wanted it to be consistent.

I don’t think originally she was going to be around for very long. I think she was just gonna be in the beginning. But I love that first scene when she meets Billy, and their banter back and forth. I enjoyed it so much that I was like, “I’ve got to keep this girl around.” She got to play a much larger part in this. And I’m glad that I was able to. I’m glad that she was added and from hearing feedback from the book, she seems to be everybody’s favorite character.

Jeff: She plays that role well, popping up, dispensing a little advice, maybe.

Jeffrey: Yes. Here and there. Yes.

Jeff: Keeping them on track.

Jeffrey: Right, right. Yeah. And she played that well. And I really wanted to use her in that way of, especially for Billy, getting him to get his mind right. We see a lot of his kind of rampant running that goes on in his mind. And I felt like he really needed somebody to bring him down to earth. And I think she did a very good job of doing that as well as providing endless comic relief.

Jeff: Yeah, she did both very well.

What’s your favorite scene in the book? Or, maybe the better question is what was the funnest one to write in the book? Because I think there are some really fun scenes in here too.

Jeffrey: There are, yeah. So, oh my gosh. I really enjoyed… There’s a moment when Billy’s having a conversation with his sister and they’re kind of debriefing on everything that’s gone on with Michael up to that point. And their banter was really funny and just really… I don’t know. As soon as I got into it, it was just… That could have been like 10 pages of a scene. I loved writing their conversation.

Most of Billy’s family with him, the conversations they would have, it was nice to be able to write a family dynamic that was just really loving and really caring because I’ve never really done that before. All of the families that I write are dysfunctional and a mess. So that was really good.

I think with Billy and Michael, my favorite scene to write with them was probably their first time when they go to the bar at the very beginning when they’re just kind of like “This is it.” They’re making the decision to stay. And Michael had a little bit too much to drink and he is just giggly and bubbly and his whole kind of demeanor changes a lot. That was super fun to write and have them have this moment of closeness and really get to that point where it’s okay, we’re locked in now. We’re doing this. We’re staying in this airport together. It’s you and me for a while. That was great to be able to write. So I think those are probably my favorite ones that ended up making it to the final cut of it.

Jeff: How much ended up on the cutting room floor, because I could imagine you could have done a lot more things in the airport than you actually put in the final book.

Jeffrey: Yeah. There were a couple of scenes. They didn’t really serve much. It was just a lot of flirting mostly. Yeah, it was a lot of flirting. It was just a lot of… and it was cute stuff, but ultimately the direction that I wanted to go in, at certain points, it just didn’t make sense to have in there. But, it was just a lot of airport banter was what it was. But all the good stuff, all the things that I really wanted to have make an impact on the story stayed in. Most of it stayed in. There was very little that was cut out.

And that’s usually the way that it goes for me. I don’t usually cut out a whole lot. If I have an idea for something, I usually can already tell that maybe it won’t work. So I’ll write it separately. I’ll open another document or I’ll pull out my notebook and I’ll write it on a separate page and I’ll just write out the scene. And if it fits, it fits. And if it doesn’t, I just toss it. Scenes don’t last very long for me if they don’t seem like they’ll pan out very well. I’ll always give it a shot because you never know what you’ll come up with. But yeah, if I’m already feeling it as I’m writing it that it’s not gonna work, I just scrap it. But nine times out ten, if I fully write a scene in a book, it’s staying in there. We’ve pushed into a beautiful place where I want to be, so I just like to keep it moving.

Jeff: So one last question from Sol, plan to write more rom-coms?

Jeffrey: I think so. I think so. I’ve got a couple of things already in the works. Because it was so much, especially coming out of “Somewhere in the Gray Area,” which is my debut novel, it was nice to be able to have something that, while “Meet Me in the Sky” touches on some serious topics, it’s still, light, fluffy, and romantic. So it was nice to be able to have that, breath of fresh air for a little bit.

I’ve got a couple things in the works. I’m really excited to get back into the rom-com world already. Like I said, I’ve got a couple of ideas. But I really do think I’m gonna move a little bit back into my thriller bag and see what I’ve got to pull out of there first. And then I think once I get rid of all the seriousness, the heaviness, and the drama of it all, I’ll do light and fluffy again eventually. But I like writing the drama. I like writing the seriousness. And it was difficult for me at first to do light and fluffy. It’s never been something that I’ve done regularly. I’ve always been all about the drama, everything I watch, everything I listen to, it’s so heavy. I felt that was what my strength was.

I think I was having a conversation with my dad a couple of years ago, and we were talking about what I would be interested in writing next at that point. He asked me if I would ever write comedy. I remember telling him I’m not funny. There’s no way that I can write comedy. I said, “I don’t think I’m built for it.” I felt like trying to be funny was such a horrifying thought for me. But I did enjoy being able to throw these little one-liners in here and having these two characters who I think are hilarious in their own regard. But yeah, I mean, I’m excited to be able to do that again eventually.

Jeff: Given your love of thriller kind of writing, do you see yourself maybe also headed in a romantic suspense kind of zone so you could do almost both at the same time to some degree?

Jeffrey: Yeah. “Somewhere in the Gray Area” is a bit of that. But it’s a big A plot and the romance is the B plot. And I feel like I would like to do something similar again. But maybe, I think… So upping the romance a little bit in there and being able to do both, I think that would be just a different beast to tackle, which is fun. That’s kind of how I see a lot of my next projects and things that are coming up is what can I do that’s different from what I’ve already done. To try to tackle that and kind of test out my own writing abilities and my own imagination, seeing what I can do with something different. I love to experiment in that way. So I’m excited to be able to move into a lot of these new things that are coming up as well.

Jeff: Tell us a little bit about “Somewhere in the Gray Area” for those who may not have picked it up yet, and maybe want to go from “Meet Me in the Sky” to the other book that you’ve got.

Jeffrey: Yeah. So, “Somewhere in the Gray Area” is what I would consider a thriller romance. And you’ve got main character, James Rhodes. He is a tech intern in his junior year of college. He works for a professor who was previously a big tech CEO. He’s retired. He teaches now. And they’ve got a good bond in the beginning of the book. And he’s just kind of type A. He wants to do everything by the book and do everything right, and he thinks that he can do everything right, which of course is not the case.

But essentially he ends up finding out that his boss was doing a lot of hacking and undercover things that he didn’t know about, which leads to all the other interns and his boss getting murdered. And it becomes a big government coverup and he’s the only one left alive. And he is saved by a group of mercenaries, spies, if you will, who save him and they have to kind of uncover what exactly his boss was up to while also trying to keep James safe.

And then you have James who finds a liking to the lead agent Mateo. So we get a lot of their romance in that moment, in this high stakes government cover up disaster essentially. Which was super fun to write and have a bit of juxtaposition there too. It’s a lot of seriousness and a lot of thrill and a lot of angst that’s going on. And then you have these kind of tender, calming moments between the two of them that give you a little bit of a breath from all of the stress that’s going on outside.

But you know, that was a thrill to write as well. And something similar to that in the future would be nice to get back to as well. I love the action. I love the suspense. I’m really into that. I always enjoyed, growing up, spies and James Bond and all that. I was super into it. If you ask my Mom, growing up, I would always ask her, “Are spies real? Are secret agents real? Can you do that? Is that?” And she was so sick of it she said, “That’s enough, all right. You can do it. I don’t know how to. I don’t know what school you need to go to. I don’t know how you can achieve it. But yes, you can do it. Stop asking.”

But I was so into it. “Power Rangers.” I loved the “Power Rangers” growing up. But that was big for me. I was a spy kid, essentially. That was something that I really enjoyed. So it was nice to be able to write something like that and kind of do an homage to my younger self a little bit.

Jeff: What made you pull the trigger on writing and publishing a book? Cause “Somewhere in the Gray Area” has only been out a year or so. So this is all still relatively new for you.

Jeffrey: It is, yeah. When I was writing “Somewhere in the Gray Area,” it’s funny actually. I started writing “Somewhere in the Gray Area” probably about 10 years ago. And I had gotten, I think I, want to say maybe about the first chapter. I wasn’t too far into it, but I just couldn’t really get the plot down. I had just vibes essentially. I really couldn’t nail it down. And so I would… I put it down for a while.

I got into screenwriting a lot during that time. And so I actually wrote a pilot kind of centered around the same idea. And then about two years ago maybe, something clicked and I finally saw the plot for what it was and I started writing it. And I told myself, I’m writing it for me. I just want to get this story out because I see it so clearly in my head. I’ve got to get it on paper. And as it was going, I was probably about halfway through I said, “Oh, this is like a real book. This is like an actual story that has substance.”

At that point I said, “All right, well, I want to go ahead and pull the trigger on it and get started. I think I want to be able to bare this little bit of myself to other people and hope and pray that, somebody enjoys it cause I had so much fun writing it and kind of getting into this whole world.” And it all, yeah… like you said, it’s only been a year. It’s a little less than a year. We’re coming up on a year now. But it’s been just a whirlwind kind of diving directly into this whole existence of being a writer and being an author. And it’s been fantastic.

Been really fun and meeting great people, obviously. And I don’t know. It’s just, it’s crazy. But I’m very glad that I did it. I’m glad that I decided to bare my soul a little bit and put it on paper and have other people be able to see it and see a little bit inside of myself and in my head. And, it’s a joy that people find joy in it and enjoy it.

It’s still now, every time anyone says that they enjoyed either of my books, I’m just like, how did you even get that? That’s not, that’s supposed to be a secret. You weren’t supposed to know about that. But I’m so grateful though. I’m so grateful that people are finding something in the writing. That is my goal at the end of the day, to have someone take something from what I write. Because I know a lot of my favorite books, that’s what I leave it with. I leave it with something and that your heart being pulled a little bit out of your chest when you’re finished with a piece of work. That’s really something that I wanted to give to other people. So I hope that’s what I do and I hope to continue to do it.

Jeff: You mentioned coming back to rom-coms after a little bit. Is there anything you could tease us about what you’re working on now that we might get to see sometime in 2025?

Jeffrey: There is something very exciting coming in 2025. It will be announced later this year. I will say that writing “Meet Me in the Sky” gave me an idea of having all of my books, at least for the moment, connected in some way. So I’ll say that there is a bit of an Easter egg in “Meet Me in the Sky” for something that is coming.

Jeff: Ooh, okay.

Jeffrey: So I don’t know. I don’t know. If you can find it and you know what it is, then that’s your secret.

Jeff: Now I’m going to have to rethink the whole book, that there might be an Easter egg in there.

Jeffrey: Yeah, I like to hide a little bit, here and there.

Jeff: Alright, good to know. And I’ll be watching your social media to see what you announce too, to see if then I can connect the two things together.

So as we wrap up, we love to get recommendations. What are you reading or watching that our listeners might want to check out?

Jeffrey: Yeah. You know what? This year I haven’t had the time to read as much, which I’ve hated because I’ve been so bogged down getting “Meet Me in the Sky” ready. But currently I’m in the middle of reading “The Pairing” by Casey McQuiston that I’m really enjoying. And I’m finishing up Cat Sebastian’s most recent book, You Should Be So Lucky.” I’ve also really enjoyed. It’s really gotten me into historical romance. I never really thought that was something that I enjoyed very much. I just never really gave it a shot. But I’m really enjoying Cat Sebastian’s work a lot. So those two.

And then I’m also kind of on a bit of a journey of kind of reclaiming the books that I read as a teenager. So, “This Pain Will Be Useful to You.” “This Pain Will Someday be Useful to You.” I can’t remember the exact title of it but I read it when I was about 13 or 14, and it was a good read for me just dealing with queer identity. As well as, “Rainbow Boys.” “The Rainbow Boy.” That was fantastic. So I’m starting that again cause I haven’t read those since I was, I don’t know, maybe 12 or 13. And they were so formative. So I really want to dive back into the… oh, I am diving back into those now. But yeah, that’s what’s there. TV is just trash TV. A lot of “Love Island.” A lot of “Vanderpump Rules.” That’s like my escape a lot of that. A lot of that. Yeah.

Jeff: How can people keep up with you online so that they know what you are doing in 2025, as things, continue to roll out for “Meet Me in the Sky” and everything else.

Jeffrey: Yeah, most of my announcements and a lot of my interaction is on Instagram @jeffreykdavenport, just like my name. But that is the best way to see what I’ve got going on and see what’s happening and what’s upcoming. It’ll be announced there before anything else.

Jeff: Fantastic. We will link to that, everything we talked about in the show notes for the episode. Jeffrey, thank you so much for coming and chatting about “Meet Me in the Sky” and I’m so glad it got put on my radar cause it was just outstanding.

Jeffrey: That’s so sweet. Yeah, I’m so glad. Thank you so much for having me. I’m so glad we got to meet finally and chit chat about Billy and Michael and their rendezvous through JFK.

Wrap-Up

Will: This episode’s transcript has been brought to you by our community on Patreon. If you’d like to read the conversation for yourself, head on over to the show notes page for this episode at BigGayFictionPodcast.com. We’ve got links to everything that we’ve talked about in this episode.

Jeff: And thanks so much to Jeffrey for talking to us about “Meet Me in the Sky.” In case I haven’t said it enough, I really love this book, and I can’t wait to read more from Jeffrey in the future.

Now let’s find out what Chat has to say about this conversation. Hey, ChatGPT, what did you think of the interview with Jeffrey?

ChatGPT: From the interview with Jeffrey Davenport, I learned a lot about the creative process behind his novel “Meet Me in the Sky” and the intentional way he crafted the characters and plot. Jeffrey was inspired by his own experiences in airports, which sparked the idea of a forced-proximity romance in such a high-stakes, often stressful setting. I found it fascinating how he developed the characters of Billy and Michael, each with their unique emotional baggage that created a deeper connection beyond the initial “meet-hate” moment. Jeffrey also shared how he crafted the airport scenes with realism while allowing some creative liberties to serve the story, showing the lengths he went to keep the story engaging without making it repetitive.

I also loved how he balanced lighthearted rom-com elements with more complex, introspective moments. Jeffrey’s approach to dialogue as a character-revealing tool was insightful; he used it to discover each character’s voice and personality, which is evident in the playful yet poignant exchanges between Billy and Michael. Additionally, the inclusion of airport staff like Addison added warmth and humor to the story, supporting the main characters in a relatable way.

Overall, the interview highlighted Jeffrey’s commitment to blending humor, romance, and emotional depth, creating a story that resonates with readers on multiple levels.

Jeff: I really appreciate how Chat focused on the craft and writing process from the interview. Jeffrey has a lot of story threads that had to be balanced in “Meet Me in the Sky” and that was a part of the conversation I really enjoyed hearing how he brought all of that together.

Will: All right. I think that’ll do it for now. Coming up next on Monday, December 2nd, we’re looking back at one of our favorite holiday romances, Suzanne Brockmann’s, “All Through the Night.”

Jeff: “All Through the Night” is a groundbreaking gay romance, and with the holiday season underway, and the fact that it was honored earlier this year as it appeared on Time Magazine’s list of the “50 Best Romance Novels to Read Right Now,” it’s a great time to revisit this classic.

Will: Jeff and I, we wanna thank you so much for listening, and we hope that you’ll join us again soon for more discussions about the kinds of stories we all love, the big gay fiction kind. Until then, keep turning those pages and keep reading.

Big Gay Fiction Podcast is part of the Frolic Podcast Network. Find more shows you’ll love at frolic.media/podcasts. Original theme music by Daryl Banner.

 

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