Episode 468 – Revisiting a Holiday Classic: “All Through the Night” by Suzanne Brockmann

Dec 2, 2024

Jeff & Will celebrate the gay romance holiday classic All Through the Night by Suzanne Brockmann, recently honored in Time Magazine’s “50 Best Romances to Read Right Now.” As part of the festivities, they revisit their 2017 interview with Suzanne, her husband Ed Gaffney, and son Jason T. Gaffney where they discuss the creation of Jules and Robin, the unforgettable couple from the Troubleshooters series. Then the guys dive into their thoughts on All Through the Night in a throwback to the 2020 Big Gay Fiction Book Club episode, revisiting one of their favorite holiday romances.

Look for the next episode of Big Gay Fiction Podcast on Monday, December 16.

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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.

Intro

Jeff: Coming up on this episode, we’re talking about the classic gay holiday romance “All Through the Night” by Suzanne Brockmann.

Will: Welcome to episode 468 of the Big Gay Fiction Podcast, the show for avid readers and passionate fans of queer romance fiction. I’m Will, and with me here, as always, is my co-host and husband, Jeff.

Jeff: Hello, Rainbow Romance Reader. It’s great to have you here for another episode of the show as we kick off December.

Will: Now, you know we love holiday stories and one of our absolute favorites is Suzanne Brockmann’s “All Through the Night,” which features the wedding of her popular characters FBI agent Jules to actor Robin. We spotlighted this in the Big Gay Fiction Book Club episode in 2020, and we wanted to revisit the book now because earlier this year, “Time Magazine” listed “All Through the Night” as one of “The 50 Best Romance Novels to Read Right Now.” About the book, “Time” wrote, “With Suzanne Brockmann’s 2007 high octane queer romance ‘All Through the Night,’ she crucially helped expand the genre by publishing a mainstream romance novel with a main character who was gay.”

Jeff: It’s a trailblazing romance for sure. And it should be noted this isn’t the only queer romance on “Time’s” list. We’ve got a link to the list in the show notes so you could check out the rest of the list along with a great essay from “Red, White, and Royal Blue’s” Casey McQuiston titled “Romance Novels are Literature.”

But I digress, back to “All Through the Night.” Before we get into our book club discussion, we wanna revisit part of our 2017 interview with Suzanne, as well as her husband, Ed Gaffney and her son Jason T. Gaffney, where Suze talked about the origin of Jules and Robin and getting them to their wedding.

Interview with Suzanne Brockmann, Ed Gaffney, and Jason T. Gaffney

Jeff: What was your genesis for Jules, who you introduced in “Troubleshooters” number two?

Suzanne: I knew that I wanted to write a character…first of all, I knew that I was writing military romantic suspense. And I knew that my readership was incredibly…they skewed very socially conservative. And taking what I knew about my readers, I knew that they probably lived in parts of the country where being out was probably very dangerous. So they knew gay people but they probably didn’t know that they knew gay people.

And what I decided to do is I decided to write them a gay best friend. And I created Jules Cassidy and gave him to them. And created him…He was originally…you walked onto the page as Alyssa Locke, one of my major secondary characters who had a story arc that went throughout the series. She was a woman of color, an FBI agent, a former Navy sharpshooter. And I planned out her romance with one of my popular Navy SEAL characters guy, Sam Starrett. He’s from Texas, he starts off the series kind of homophobic and ignorant, very ignorant, smart guy, but definitely ignorant.

And so I gave Alyssa a partner in the FBI who was this really adorable, witty, gay man. So I basically followed the rules of witty gay sidekick, right that’s…you know, earlier in literature gay people were the serial killers. So witty gay sidekick is a step up, right? I think we can all agree with that. I mean it’s not perfect. But it included witty gay sidekick is of course, asexual, so you get to be fabulous. And I mean, you guys know this right but don’t have sex. But that’s how I introduced Jules like, very safe. And so in the first book that he’s in “The Defiant Hero,” he shows up. He’s fabulous, he makes people laugh.

And he meets the team of SEALs and Sam reacts to him in a homophobic way. And Alyssa…then it creates a conflict between him and Alyssa because Alyssa…So I kind of give readers a choice of kind of characters to relate to. They could either be Sam with his like, “Who’s that scary gay guy? I don’t know him. I need to be careful around him, I don’t trust him.” Or Alyssa who is the, you know, best friends with the scary gay guy.

And throughout the series I basically planned out my journey for Jules and Sam to become really good friends because it’s all about getting to know me, right? It’s about…like putting a face to a stereotype and killing the stereotype by the reality of here I’m talking to a person. And so I let Sam take that journey in real-time through the books.

And so for example, so in “Defiant Hero” he meets Jules and he’s like scary gay guy, don’t turn my back on him. You know all the stupid, stupid things that homophobes say when they meet somebody. But Jules is a incredibly skilled FBI agent. He’s hero material, he’s this incredible heroic guy and he’s a great partner to the SEALs and the SEAL team. So throughout the books, you know, the next book it’s “Over The Edge” it’s a takedown of a hijacked airplane and Jules is on the scene again with Alyssa. And he and Sam have a moment kind of bonding over their affection for Alyssa, and their friendship starts to grow.

And Sam finds out in that book that Jules has a live-in lover, and he gets to react to that. And it’s like, oh, wait a minute, so Jules maybe isn’t the asexual sidekick, but it’s off-page. It’s nice and safe for the readers. And so then in the next book, we find out more about Jules, and we find out that…we and Sam, find out that Adam has left Jules and broken his heart. Just like Sam’s heart has been broken by Alyssa. And Sam has this moment of “Oh, Jules really loved this guy,” and it’s something that he hadn’t thought about before about that being gay is about being a person and falling in love.

So I let my readers take the journey with Sam and learn about Jules. And throughout this journey, Jules is a skilled FBI agent who always saves the day. And if I needed to have a character come in, you know, deus ex-machina, here I come to save the day, it was always Jules. And my message to the readers was okay, here’s this out gay FBI agent, is he heroic enough for you yet? How about now? How about now? There are times for subtlety in our books and there’s times where you just like, let it go with a sledgehammer.

And so if you read the entire “Troubleshooters” series, Jules keeps showing up with a sledgehammer and being that incredible romance hero who just happens to be gay. And so yeah, so we progressed to the point…and you know…so while I was writing these books, I was going on book tours, I was doing the whole…you know, the publisher was always sending me to Ohio. So I’d be in middle America in, you know, red states and conservative places. And I’d walk into the bookstore, we do a Q&A and I can tell you it was so gratifying.

Like one of the first questions I was always asked was, “Will we see more of Jules Cassidy in the next book?” And readers love this character. It was just so gratifying to recognize that it was working, that I was giving readers this character to relate to in a way that maybe they hadn’t stopped to think about before. And by the time that I wrote Jules’s…I gave him my, you know, romantic connection with Robin and takes…you know, there’s a kiss in “Hot Target.” You know, when that came out, what year was that? That was like…I wanna say 2003 maybe.

We honestly didn’t know because of the subplot in “Hot Target,” which is Jules meets Robin and then they kiss and do things that people do when they’re attracted to each other. And we didn’t know if we would get reviewed by the major review sites because of this. And we were which was really great but you know, we went into it knowing you know, we just don’t know, we really don’t know.

And one of the things that I did when “Hot Target” came out I was ready for…You know how all the publishers are always saying you know, “We’ll get angry letters.” Yeah, you know, you get one star, you get angry letters. But I was ready for the letters of appreciation, the letters of affection to Jules. And I knew there’d be just literally thousands of emails that I’d be getting from readers who were so happy to see Jules finally get some action on the page of the book.

And I collected them, I redacted the personal information from the people who sent them to me. And I put them into a collection that I printed out. Because I wanted the heft of these many pages…I mean, we’re talking thousands of emails. And I wanted it to land on my publisher’s desk. So I bound it, you know, I went to staples and did one of those like bind back in the day you were binding things. And I sent it to my publisher, to my editor, to a bunch of people over at Random House. Because I wanted it to land on their desk with a bang to counter anything that they might be hearing from the screechy shrill, people who hate. And it was very effective, it really was and it kind of kept going.

But, yeah, so my goal was to give these readers who maybe didn’t…who were ignorant about what it meant to be gay. I wanted to give them Jules, and I wanted them to think about what was gonna happen when Jules won his happily ever after, in his book, and shouldn’t he have the right to get married just like every other romance hero. And, yeah, the response was overwhelmingly positive from readers. You know, the kind of standard email that I’ve gotten is, “I never really thought about it before. “And I never really gave it…I didn’t think, you know, and now I believe that everyone should have the right to be married.” And it’s just like, yes. So that was extremely cool but the journey was carefully thought out and planned again so that the world could be more welcoming for my son and for people that I loved.

Jeff: So I have to ask about how “Hot Target” since that’s the book where Jules and Robin got together. Did you approach that in any way differently than you would have a hero/heroine scenario and bringing men and women together? Or did you write the scenes in the same way that you would have so you weren’t pulling punches with the audience?

Suzanne: Well, I was…remember that my mission statement was to change hearts and minds. And so I knew I had to tread really carefully and focus on the emotional rather than the explicit. Well, for example, in “Hot Target, there’s not a sex scene between Jules and Robin. Yes, you know, I guess I did approach it differently because so much of their story was Robin’s realization that he is gay. And he’s playing a gay character in a movie, he’s exploring what that means as an actor playing a character, and he comes bumping up against his very real feelings for Jules.

So, yeah, you know what I mean? I was very careful throughout the process of writing these subplots, to make sure that my readers stayed with me. The people who might be…who were maybe hesitant to think about gay people as equals. Because what I was really trying to do was to show that love is, love is, love is love and focus again on the emotional sameness of the relationships. So, yeah, so I tread very carefully, you know. It was the book that Jules and Robin first have sex is “Force of Nature” and I definitely pulled the gauze over the camera lens for those scenes.

And it was…you know, I got a lot of pushback from the readers who were ready for that, who were ready to read male/male romance and you know, I had to make a choice. And since my goal again was to bring people…I wasn’t preaching to the choir. I was trying to change hearts and minds. And I wish I could have written it the way I wanted to write it. But I really had to be careful because I didn’t wanna lose those readers and I wanted them to finish the book and to think love is, love is, love. And then move on from there hopefully to other books that had gay characters.

So yeah, it was careful and it was definitely a choice. And it was…you know, it’s sad that I had to do it that way, you know. But the world is really different now and I feel pretty confident that doing what I did, I helped kick in the door.

Jeff: Going back to 2007, Suzanne released a book in the “Troubleshooters” series called “All Through the Night” that saw the wedding between FBI agent Jules and actor Robin. Now that was groundbreaking at the time for mainstream romance. And the book became the first M/M to hit “The New York Times” hardcover fiction bestseller list. How did that book come about that you were able to pull that off?

Suzanne: Well, it goes back, way back even before 2007. Ed and I became connected…well, actually, Ed, Jason, and I all three of us became connected to an organization called MassEquality. And this is a group that had been around for a while. LGBTQ rights with a focus on marriage equality. And the story kind of really starts when Jason was in high school and he was home sick, right, Jace? You take it. Take it away, Jason.

Jason: So I was sick probably like just the man flu or something, something pitiful. And somehow I ended up watching the Massachusetts version of C-SPAN because…I actually think I was watching random TV and I think mom, I think you came in the room and were like, “Turn it to the C-SPAN…”

Suzanne: It’s possible.

Jason: “…we have to watch.” And then I started watching it and I was completely shocked because I had no idea that I couldn’t get married to…like I was out by this point. I was 16, 17 I was already out. And it didn’t occur to me that I couldn’t get married to the man of my dreams when I met him. And these people were having a fight like there were words exchanged by people on the floor.

Suzanne: On the floor of the Statehouse in Massachusetts. So this was you know, hot C-SPAN action going on with just like, riveting, and awful, and heartening at times, but awful at times. So Ed, take it away.

Ed: The way I remember I’m not exactly sure of exactly what Jason saw exactly when. But I do know this when in Massachusetts in 2004, the state Supreme Court ruled that our constitution allows gay people to get married, it would be an infringement of their constitutional rights to not have them get married. I don’t exactly know what happened with Jace, but I do know what happened with the Massachusetts legislature.

Immediately upon that ruling, people in the legislature started an effort to amend the constitution to basically take away the right of gay people to get married. It was around this time that Jason became aware as did I. I didn’t…like Jace came out a few years before that and it never crossed my mind gay people married or not married. I mean, if you’d asked me, I probably would have said, I guess they can get married I don’t know. I never thought of it. You know, Jason was what? 16 or 17.

Well, the minute he found out that there was a time when he couldn’t. And then when he found out there were people trying to take away the right to get married he got furious, understandably. And the three of us immediately got activated. And we became political activists from that minute forward.

Suzanne: Yeah, some of our protest signs are…actually they aren’t really protest signs, they were more like proud to live in Massachusetts signs are behind Ed.

Ed: Oh, yeah those are historical documents back there. Suze and I were marching around the Massachusetts Statehouse with these signs around this time. So this is like 2004, 2005…

Suzanne: 2006.

Ed: 2006. And then in 2007, we thought we’d won, we had beaten back just about every legislative effort that had been put forward to amend the Constitution. And we found out, no, we gotta do it one more time. And this time, out of the 200 people in the Massachusetts State Legislature, we had to get 150 votes out of those 200 to support gay marriage. And it was an all hands on deck thing because if we didn’t get this, then it was gonna go to a statewide referendum and it was just gonna be bedlam. I mean, Massachusetts was gonna be suddenly, you know…

Suzanne: Brutal.

Ed: …ground zero for every crazy nutjob and his busload of crazy nutjob cousins coming into Massachusetts with their ugly signs, and their hate, and the whole circus. So that’s when Suze got an idea.

Suzanne: Yeah, and we had been doing all kinds of activism from the, you know, candlelight vigils to the sign-carrying protests, to working for local politicians who supported equality. Ed did canvassing knocking on doors, you know, house to house, to say “Hello, meet me and let me tell you why I believe my son should have the same right as your children.” And that’s it, it takes a lot of something to go door to door and it’s not my strength.

And I remember thinking, you know, oh my god, we’d had the party celebrating the fact that we’d won marriage equality in Massachusetts. And now suddenly, we were you know, getting this conference call from Mass Equality and the leaders of that organization saying, you know, “Get out your candles and your signs because we’re not done.” And I had just finished writing the book “Force of Nature” where Jules and Robin, these two kind of characters that have gone throughout the series, they kind of achieve their happy ending. And it was a little bit of a surprise to me, I didn’t expect to have that happen in that book.

So I knew I wanted to write another book with them. And for many years readers and my publisher alike had been pressuring me to do two things. One was to write a holiday book some type of Christmasy story, and the other was to write a wedding. And I tend not…since I write romantic suspense, I tend not to write the actual…you don’t see the characters get married. And I suddenly thought, I have a wedding book. Here’s the story that I wanna tell.

And right now, it’s legal in Massachusetts for Jules and Robin to get married. So they’re gonna come to Massachusetts to do…the story is gonna be set there. And I knew too that MassEquality needed a lot of money, and they needed it right away. So I pitched the idea to my agent and telling him, we need to make this deal, it’s gotta be a standalone book, I’m gonna give the rights, all of my proceeds, sub-rights, all of everything, every penny I earn from this book is gonna go to MassEquality until the end of time. It’s still going to MassEquality.

But this is what I do. I write stories, I write books. And this is something that I can bring to this emergency situation that is a little bit unique, and will hopefully keep me from having to knock on too many more doors. So that’s really where it came about. And the publisher was excited about it. And Mass Equality was really excited about it. In fact, they used…yeah, it was a six-figure advance that I got for that book that I immediately got to them. And they used that money to make a TV ad that was…Ed, you remember it, right?

Ed: It was a hockey player. I can’t remember whether it was college or high school hockey player. And he’s just a kid, just a Massachusetts kid, right. And he’s talking about his family. And he’s a hockey player and it’s you know, totally townie type guy. And then he introduces you to his moms who are up at you know, all hours to drive him to hockey practice. And it was just one of those perfect ads that…I mean, the whole campaign for protecting marriage rights in Massachusetts was centered around educating everybody, mostly the legislature. But anybody that would listen to the reality that LGBT people are people, everybody is the same.

This is just nothing to, you know, make laws about, we are all the same. And there’s a lot of people that just didn’t get that, they knew gay people, but they didn’t know that they knew gay people. They had this image of what gay was and it was completely crazy. And once…

Suzanne: And this commercial allowed us through MassEquality to knock on millions of doors at the same time. So the work that Ed was doing was kind of amplified by, you know, like, here, Massachusetts, meet this charming young man and his moms and see how we are all the same. So it was really cool that they were able to do that, you know, with that advance money from this book.

But yeah, so you know, that’s kind of where it started with “All Through The Night,” actually, with Jules and Robin having their own book. But you know, the fight for marriage equality the story has a really happy ending for our family in particular.

Jason: Then I got married last year.

Jeff: Did you go to Massachusetts to do it?

Jason: No, we stuck around in California. Matt’s family, my husband, Matt his family all lives out here. And it was warm and tropical and so we figured we’d stay.

Suzanne: It was awesome. I always said, “You know what, I am gonna dance at my son’s wedding.” And I danced in my son’s wedding. It was the best, it was the best wedding ever it was awesome.

Ed: Best wedding ever.

Jeff: I love that story so much hearing Suzanne’s method for getting Jules integrated into the “Troubleshooters” universe and ultimately using this book to help fund MassEquality. And of course that Jason got his HEA and that she got to dance at his wedding. It makes me happy every single time I hear that interview.

Will: Yeah. Weddings and happily ever afters for all concerned. And now let’s get to our book club discussion of “All Through the Night.”

Book Club Discussion: All Through the Night by Suzanne Brockmann

Will: So “All Through the Night” features FBI Agent Jules Cassidy, and in the beginning of our story, he has hopped on a plane from DC to Boston where his boyfriend Robin Chadwick is wrapping up his HBO series. Robin’s character has gotten a new story arc for next season, and he wants to talk about what that means for their relationship. And after an extended series of phone tag messages, Jules decides to show up and talk in person.

They meet unexpectedly in front of the hotel just as Robin is leaving to go see Jules. But Robin has checked out and there’s a room shortage in the Boston Metro area. It’s a parent’s weekend at many of the local colleges, so there’s no room at the proverbial inn for our two heroes.

Jeff: This was so adorable to me. It’s like one of those classics, I’m coming to surprise you, but wait, I’m coming to surprise you. And now this thing has happened where there is no room for anybody. I thought it set up their relationship so well. You immediately see here their connection and their love for each other, and it’s really delightful.

Will: Now to add insult to injury, Jules has gotten food poisoning from a bad airport taco. They go to hang with Jules’s friend Alyssa, who happens to be in town on a job for Troubleshooters, which is the private security firm that is the basis for the entire series. Once Jules is feeling better and resting comfortably, Robin has a late night heart to heart with Sam, Alyssa’s husband, one of the heroes from a previous book. And their talk gets serious rather quickly, and Robin realizes that their childhoods were equally crummy and they might have more in common than he originally thought.

Sam gets a little holier than thou when he tells Robin he better not hurt Jules, or else. But Robin can dish it out too. Sam’s protective instinct might be well-meaning, but it is misguided. Robin would never hurt Jules and is planning to propose. So in the dark of the hotel room, laying in bed, Jules and Robin hash out their future together.

Jules has plans to transfer to Boston so that Robin can continue working on a show. Both of them will finally be living in the same city. Robin proposes and Jules says yes.

Jeff: It’s so sweet. This was the first of many awwws that I had in this book. I don’t know that it’s the best thing to do to propose immediately after a food poisoning incident, but given everything they’d been through that night, it also completely worked so well.

And I have to say too, that the heart to heart that Jules and Sam had, I mean, we’ve seen these conversations play out in so many books where the best friend is like, “Do not hurt my friend. Do not do it.” And this one was really nice because these two guys, who have history in the “Troubleshooters” books of bumping heads a little bit, really kind of made their peace here and it was really nice to see that and how much the actor and the Navy SEAL really had in common.

Will: Suzanne Brockmann does something interesting here. In a traditional romance, you would get the point of views of our two main characters, in this case being Robin and Jules. But because so many of the characters that we’re going to be meeting have a history in the series, and we’ve seen the relationship of Robin and Jules developed through their eyes, several of the secondary characters get viewpoint chapters as well. And in this particular case, as I was reading along at the beginning of the book, I was sort of surprised to see the story being told from Sam’s point of view.

Jeff: Yeah, it’s unique. This whole book is a little bit unique, right, because it’s a romance book, but you’ve already got these two characters who have created their romance. I mean, this is like the cap of their happily ever after to go through and get married cause that’s not something you always see in a romance, is like the marriage that happens. Or much less to spend a whole book around that marriage. And she does it in a way that also allows you to drop into this story. I hadn’t read the previous books, and while that might’ve enriched this book had I done it, I feel like I got a complete experience. I got to know who these guys are. I got to know who the friends were. I didn’t have to go, “I wonder what they’ve been up to before,” because there’s just enough information there to tell me, for example, with Robin and Sam that they’ve not always gotten along. But there’s no info dump. There’s no previously on the “Troubleshooter” series. It just works so organically.

Will: Now the renovation of their new townhouse, well, new, at least to them, is an unending comedy of errors. When Robin and Jules arrive home from an afternoon out in the slushy Boston winter, they begin to strip out of their wet clothes, much to the surprise of their gathered friends and family who have come for a surprise wedding shower.

Jeff: So cute and this townhouse, think the movie “The Money Pit” cause that is exactly what this is and it will be a recurring character all of its own.

Will: Yeah, things get pretty rough. Now, Will, a reporter, brazenly crashes the party, blending in with everyone else looking for a scoop on the upcoming nuptials. He has a brief conversation with Robin, who thinks he works in the production office of his show. And Robin tells him that if he wants a sit down meeting with him to talk to Robin’s assistant Dolphina, who upon seeing her falls instantly, madly in love. Now, Dolphina is intrigued but really doesn’t have the time for a guy who has obviously crashed the party.

Jeff: Yeah, she does not suffer fools. She is very matter of fact. She’s very protective of Robin and Jules. And Will has, you know, violated all of that stuff. So he does not start off on the right foot with this woman at all.

Will: Jules doesn’t have patience for a party crasher either. Once he figures out he’s a reporter, he asks him to leave right before they find Robin on the front steps covered in mud. He’s managed to get himself locked out of the basement, so he had to crawl out an egress window.

Jeff: Yeah. In particular, Robin and this house do not get along well.

Will: And it’s then that they get word that the president will be attending the wedding. Their quiet little ceremony just got a whole lot bigger.

Jeff: Yeah, and this is big stuff. Keep in mind that this book was written in 2007. Marriage equality had happened in Boston. The mere idea of the president coming to a wedding of two gay guys in 2007 would’ve been jaw dropping, to say the least.

Will: In the days before Thanksgiving, the hits, they just keep on a coming. The article comes out and it is a total shit show.

Jeff: Mm-Hmm? Yes, it is.

Will: Robin gets the news that his show has been canceled. And Jules is called away to Afghanistan to help with the situation involving Al-Qaeda. When Jules’s boss arrives on Robin’s doorstep, it’s with the news that Jules’s hotel has been bombed, and they’re working on getting Jules and his team back home safely.

Jeff: Here is where some of Suzanne Brockmann’s storytelling technique shines is that she’s able to pivot the story from the wedding and start to inject some of her trademark romantic suspense elements into the story. It was a really exciting sequence here, seeing this play out between the folks waiting in Boston for news and actually seeing what was going down in Afghanistan.

Will: Yeah, I first read this book when it came out in 2007 and while I enjoyed the whole book, this next upcoming sequence was something that stuck with me and the way that Brockmann kind of explores the tension as Robin is waiting to find news about what happened to Jules. But in the middle of all this, Will arrives explaining that his notes were hacked and he wants to show Robin the real article he wrote. That, as it turns out, won’t be published because the war in Afghanistan is the current headline news. Will has a buddy in Kandahar reporting in the middle of the action. And Robin, who’s desperate for some news about Jules, will essentially forgive and forget Will for access to Will’s reporter friend.

Their house fills with the wives of the other Troubleshooters. All of them there to support Robin. In the middle of the night, Will finally gets news from a source that Jules and the other members of his team are pinned down by insurgents and the situation is dire. In Kandahar, things are getting desperate. As enemy forces move in, Jules fights to live to see Robin again and to see his wedding day. When all hope seems lost, A SEAL team moves in. They’re rescued and Jules and his group are choppered out.

Jeff: This is a really amazing sequence. I mean, like you said, there’s so much emotion and so much suspense going on here. It ratchets up in both Boston and in Kandahar. And we get to see that Will’s also a good guy. I mean, there are hints of it, but he really comes through in the end here, despite showing up at possibly the worst time he could have arrived on the doorstep in many ways. It’s really some masterful storytelling here I was so just into this part of the book as it moved rapidly through this sequence. It also shows the power of the friendship of the Troubleshooter team that everybody comes to rally around Robin too.

Will: While all this is happening, Dolphina babysits Will’s 12-year-old niece who is precocious and inquisitive and ready to genuinely sing her uncle’s praises.

Jeff: Such a cute child.

Will: It’s then that Dolphina reads the real article Will wrote about Robin and Jules. When Will finally arrives home after a long night to share the good news that Jules and everyone else got out safely, she kisses him but doesn’t want to admit that she likes him. They agree to be frenemies for the time being.

Jeff: This is another interesting thing that Suzanne does here cause I mean, this is Robin and Jules’s book, a hundred percent because of the wedding, and they’re out front. But she also weaves in a brand-new romance in the middle of it, but manages not to have that romance overshadow essentially their big day.

Will: Robin and Jules are able to talk by phone, glad that Jules made it through the ordeal and they’ll be able to spend Thanksgiving together. Robin also gets the good news that although his show got canceled, his producer is busy whipping up a brand new project just for him.

Will has reluctantly agreed, at his editor’s insistence and Jules’s request, to write a series in the weeks leading up to the big day. When he arrives at the townhouse, he witnesses all the fires Dolphina must put out concerning the complicated issues involving a wedding that the president will be attending.

He also witnesses the fallout when Robin receives word that his trash bag father won’t be attending. So while Jules is comforting Robin, Dolphina flirts and banters while trying to maintain some level of professional boundaries with Will.

And as it turns out, there’s also an issue with Adam, an actor ex with a complicated history with both of our heroes. He’s been getting threatening emails that are involving Robin.

Jeff: Yeah, if you think your family’s Thanksgiving was hard, Thanksgiving and their household for this particular year was, I mean, everything that could have happened kind of happened between doing the wedding planning and these threatening emails and a reporter on the doorstep. It’s a lot.

Will: Jules contacts Adam to see if the stalker is real or if it might just be an excuse to get between him and Robin. Both, as it turns out are true.

Jeff: I admired the fact that at least Adam admitted that he was trying to cause trouble. It was a bit of a ballsy move on his part to ask for help and also admit that he was trying to get in the way. But, yeah, he’s an interesting character.

Will: Jules eventually agrees to look into the threatening emails and gives Adam some next steps to legally protect his privacy. Next, Jules contacts Sam to talk through the security hassle of one of the wedding guests being flagged by the Secret Service. He also needs to talk through the fact that he can’t bring himself to watch the dailies from Robin’s new show.

It seems Robin’s got some love scenes with several guys in the pilot episode, and Jules is green with jealousy, but hates to bring it up with Robin not wanting to rock the boat of a wedding that has already become more complicated than they originally planned.

Jeff: I really liked seeing this aspect of Jules. There’s a lot of history that goes on with Robin. Robin is a recovering alcoholic. This will play into some of the proceedings coming up. But, it also is why Sam had so much to say because Robin has hurt Jules in the past because of his alcoholism. So there’s that aspect to it. And for big, bad tough FBI guy to say that he has trouble with his actor husband messing around with these guys. It was a very interesting, nice bit of vulnerability for Jules, I thought.

Will: The guest list for their bachelor party is primarily made up of Navy SEALs, people who work for Troubleshooters, a lot of characters from previous books, and they all gathered to play a game of laser tag.

Jeff: Best wedding party ever.

Will: But it’s the playful heat between Dolphina and Will that’s the focus of this particular scene. They’re very busy flirting and falling in love, even though they don’t want to. Will is unable to put his investigative reporter hat away and wants to ask questions of Jones, the guest who is the focus of the Secret Service. Will has dug up all sorts of uncomfortable secrets about Jones’s past before he got his new name and new life.

And Dolphina is furious that Will has been caught in a lie yet again. But the outing of Jones leads to a job offer with Troubleshooters and the opportunity to write about what happened to him in Indonesia in a book he’ll write, partnering with Will. So all in all, it’s a very good turn for Jones and his family.

Jeff: Dolphina yet again, has to deal with the fact that Will seems more focused on getting what he needs for his career than in some cases doing the right thing, which would be not snooping around maybe in her laptop sometimes.

Will: Yeah, for these two characters, it’s really interesting to watch the development of their relationship. In this case, it’s usually one step forward and two steps back.

Jeff: Very, very true.

Will: At the rehearsal dinner, Will is finally able to talk with Dolphina, who has been avoiding him like the plague. She’s not interested in giving him any more chances. Meanwhile, Adam continues to receive threats from his mysterious stalker. And when the cops in LA won’t take him seriously, he makes his way to Boston the day before the wedding where Sam, Alyssa, and Jules assess the genuine threat.

Now here as we head towards the finale of our story is where Suzanne Brockmann really kicks it up a notch when it comes to the suspense and action elements. A guy named Jessup, it turns out, is the crazy stalker, and he’s convinced that Robin has an evil robot double, and he shows up on Robin’s doorstep.

Will happens to be there to take some pictures for the next article in the series that he’s writing. When Dolphina opens the door, Jessup shoots Will in the leg. Sam, Alyssa, and Jules, figure out that Jessup is indeed on the East coast and most likely has followed Adam. And they quickly head over to the townhouse where Robin, Dolphina, and a bloodied Will have to deal with a deranged madman.

Jeff: The sequence in Kandahar was the beginning of the suspense in this book, because now we’ve got this situation. And you’re right, I mean, Suzanne just increases that tension level step by step. You’re just sitting there going, “Oh, don’t open the door. Don’t do this. Oh, don’t do that.” Because you could just see what’s gonna come with this crackpot. And on the other hand, it was really awesome to see the Troubleshooter team just kind of swoop in and deal with it too.

Will: And they arrived just as Robin and the crazy pants stalker wrestled for the gun. Jules uses his FBI training to knock out Jessup and Will is rushed to the hospital.

In the aftermath, Adam makes one last childish attempt at stoking Jules’s jealousy by flirting with Robin. Sam shoves him out the door. Jules and Robin finally have a chance to sit down and talk about Jules and his jealous streak when it comes to Robin. It turns out that Robin doesn’t mind Jules’s possessive streak. And once he explains his process as an actor–Jules, as it turns out, is the inspiration for his take charge character–they realize that they may not be perfect, you know far from it, but they are perfect for each other.

Jeff: They are. And what I love here so much, I mean, we’ve talked about on the show multiple times that I hate the moments that happen because two people aren’t talking to each other or having the conversation that they need to have to avoid a bigger misunderstanding. These two guys talk, And I love that so much. Yes, it does take Jules time to figure out how to talk to Robin about this, but the point is he does it and he does it before he messes things up completely and then has to go back and kind of grovel about it. I adore these two for that.

And I wanted Adam to get punched. I really wanted Adam to suffer from what he was doing and trying to mess with them. I wanted Sam to be much more hardcore with him, but Sam was polite and restrained, but still got him out of the picture.

Will: On the morning of the wedding, Will, who is fine by the way, is hoping for a grand declaration of love from Dolphina when she visits his bedside. But she surprises him by saying that nothing has changed and she leaves him to go to the church. But things at the church aren’t going exactly to plan. Robin went home to get a gift for Jules he left behind, and promptly locks himself in the master bathroom.

Jeff: Let’s be clear. The house locks him in the master bathroom. He did not do that to himself. The house has come for him yet again.

Will: While everyone is frantically searching for the missing actor who they all assume has fallen off the wagon, Jules figures out where he is. And when he arrives, he finds the groom to be lodged in a hole he’s created in the wall between the master bath and the bedroom.

Jeff: Think “Winnie the Pooh and The Honey Tree” right here.

Will: So ridiculous.

They managed to get cleaned up and make a mad run to the church. And as our two heroes say, their I dos, Will makes his grand gesture by showing up. Dolphina has rethought some things after she sees the faith that Jules had in Robin. She finally admits that she loves him and gives him a great big kiss before sending him back to the hospital to recuperate.

Jeff: I love you. Now, please go finish getting well.

Will: Yeah, I know, exactly.

In the back of the limo, on the way to the reception, Robin gives Jules a CD featuring music that will help them decompress after such a stressful ceremony. It seems their first time together was in the back of a limo and he wants their first time as husbands to be to a song other than “Hooked on a Feeling.”

Jeff: There’s nothing wrong with that song, as “Guardians of the Galaxy” has proven to us. I adored that scene. Can we just talk about, for a minute, the time capsule that this book is. So Robin makes him a mix CD.

Will: I know, right?

Jeff: There’s reference to the “Gilmore Girls” in here.

Will: Yes, there was.

Jeff: Which was hit at the time. There is a line where somebody actually says, “MapQuest me those directions.” Do we remember MapQuest? That made me chuckle. In the time before, you know, Google Maps and GPS. It’s a lovely time capsule of 2007 on top of just being a really wonderful story. I don’t know many authors who could take what’s really so many disparate elements between the getting ready for the wedding and the wedding, managing another love story between two side characters, putting all the suspense elements in it. Cause you really had two separate suspense elements between going overseas and then dealing with the stalker guy and wrapping it all into a beautifully cohesive package. I mean, really kudos to Suzanne Brockmann and her storytelling techniques.

Will: Yeah. I think the way that she weaves so many different elements together into such a wonderful story. Cause you’re right, there’s a lot of stuff going on. The story of the wedding, the stalker storyline, the new romance between Will and Dolphina. You know, checking in with various characters from other books. It’s an awful lot to juggle, but I think Suzanne Brockmann does a really beautiful job here. I could imagine for anyone who is a fan of the “Troubleshooter” series, this would be deeply satisfying.

But it’s also a really wonderful story for someone who is encountering these characters for the very first time. And here in our discussion of the various plot points in the book, I’m not sure we were able to adequately express some of the more intimate aspects of the story. Like at the beginning of the book, there’s the conversation that Robin and Sam have, several quiet, intimate moments between Robin and Jules. Really wonderful character driven moments that ground the story and help pull you in, so that when we encounter some of the more outrageous comedic moments or more tense action oriented moments, we care about them.

Jeff: Mm-Hmm. And it’s also, as we mentioned before, she does all this in a way that if this is your first “Troubleshooters” book, you don’t feel outta your depth either cause it was certainly my first “Troubleshooters” book, although now I want to go back and gobble up more about Jules and Robin for sure. But it’s just wonderful.

And I wanna say too, we don’t often talk about the author’s notes in these books. I’m an author’s notes reader. I will always read the author’s note to whatever book I’ve read cause I wanna see what the author additionally has to say. I encourage everybody to read the author’s note here. This was written by Suze as Massachusetts was potentially losing its marriage equality that it had already won. And the author’s note is so heartfelt about why Jules and Robin exist. It’s a nice kind of companion piece to the interviews that we have with Suze. So I encourage you to read that at the end of the book as well.

Will: So all in all, I think it should come as no surprise that I certainly enjoyed revisiting this particular story, and I hope that if you haven’t had a chance to read “All Through the Night,” that you will give this story by Suzanne Brockmann a try.

Now, you may be asking yourself Will, what happens after the events of “All Through the Night?”

Jeff: Indeed, I am.

Will: I’m so glad you asked because in the awkwardly titled “Beginnings and Ends” and “When Tony Met Adam,” Suzanne has collected some of the short stories that she’s written in the intervening years covering some of the events and characters featured in this particular book.

So if you’re curious about what is happening to Robin and Jules, the story “Beginnings and Ends” has got you covered. It takes place five years after “All Through the Night,” and Robin is enjoying a whole lot of success playing a closeted actor in his cable TV series. But one day, an on-set incident leaves Robin feeling triggered, and he’s really rethinking the direction that his life has taken. Not his relationship with Jules, because that’s as rock solid as ever. But after taking some time to reevaluate, the two of them decide to change things up. They’re going to get a new place, take advantage of some new job opportunities, and maybe even expand their family.

Something unique about this story is that it also focuses on the fictional character of Joe and his storyline on Robin’s TV show. I’ll admit, as I was reading this, at first I was a little bit annoyed because, you know, I don’t care about Joe. I wanna know all about Robin and Jules. But Suzanne Brockmann is a pro, and by showing what Joe is going through and exploring the parallels that the character has with Robin’s life, we get a much better idea of what Robin is feeling and why he makes some really big life choices.

We even get to experience the final scene in the final episode of the show, which sends Joe off on his happily ever after the same way that Robin was able to find his with Jules. Damnit Brockmann you got me to care about this silly, fictional character.

Jeff: It’s very kind of like interesting how, you know you’ve got the fictional character of Jules and then you’re going inside another fictional character who he plays on a show. It’s very…

Will: It’s stories within stories and it’s handled in a really interesting way. I like what she did here with this particular story.

Jeff: And I can’t believe that you mentioned that they might give up their place. They work so hard on that money pit.

Will: New horizons, new beginnings.

Now the theme of redeeming Irredeemable heroes is something that romance authors have been tackling since time immemorial. But redeeming the character of Adam is going to be a very tall order, but it’s a challenge that Suzanne does not shy away from and tackles in “When Tony Met Adam.” Now this story takes place, mere moments after we saw Adam in “All Through the Night.” If you will remember, Adam was pulling the same shit he always does, trying to cause problems between Robin and Jules and Sam kicked him out. And as he was leaving their brownstone, a Navy SEAL who was standing outside, flirted with him.

“When Tony Met Adam” picks up in that exact same moment, but this time we get the scene from Tony’s point of view. And that is when Tony, our lovable Navy SEAL, sets his sight on Adam and won’t let anything stand in his way, not even, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. And it’s because of this policy that he has to carefully navigate this new dynamic with his teammates. When Tony finally has a chance to see Adam, which Adam implicitly insist is just going to be a hookup and absolutely nothing more.

Adam is not surprisingly a total dick when Tony arrives at his place. But there is a certain kind of chemistry. And they spend one amazing, phenomenal night together. Tony has to leave the very next morning. The problem being that he thought he had three days. He had this whole plan to make Adam fall in love with him. Tony is a really interesting character. He’s strong and driven and focused, you know, he’s a Navy seal. But he’s also very young and he has a really interesting naive charm, especially when it comes to the romantic possibilities with Adam, who is an unrepentant dick.

Jeff: But you know, if anybody can wrangle him, it’s going to be a Navy SEAL.

Will: Exactly. Tony’s unit is called away on a mission. While he’s away, Adam can’t stop thinking about him. It’s at this point that Suzanne fills in the gaps in Adam’s difficult backstory, essentially explaining why he acts the way he does. It doesn’t excuse it, but at least we can now better understand it. Kind of getting a much more detailed perspective on why Adam is so broken and self-destructive.

While on his mission, tony is injured when his unit is attacked. Adam doesn’t want to care about Tony the way that he does, but he really has to commit to the idea of being there for someone as he fights to discover what has happened to Tony and his team. As we saw in “All Through the Night,” Suzanne Brockmann really knows how to raise the stakes for the characters and really back them into a corner.

Tony and Adam find themselves in a seemingly impossible situation. Adam wants to visit Tony in the hospital. But if he does that, it means outing Tony and possibly destroying the career that he’s built so far. And it’s how Adam navigates this particular situation that we finally see Adam grow as a person and not be such a self-involved jerk.

Jeff: And it gives me some hope that he is gonna leave Robin and Jules alone now. Finally.

Will: Yeah. I really loved both of these stories. They took the characters in some of the situations in “All Through the Night” and then built upon them. They’re not just, you know, fluffy little additions to the story, but an integral part of these characters very long history in this particular series.

What’s nice about this collection is that it’s annotated by the author herself, and through these little mini hyperlinks, you’re able to click on different pieces of the story, and Suzanne explains some of the backstory, telling you why certain characters do or say certain things. She also talks about her writer process, why she chose to exploit certain character flaws. And even, at certain points, she explores the history of when the story specifically is taking place especially in the case of Tony and Adam who are exploring the beginning of their relationship in the time of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and how unfair and truly devastating that was to our gay and lesbian service members.

Jeff: I’m so glad you read those extra stories and gave us that additional little bit. Folks, you got a couple extra things to read and I’m gonna dive into those because I wanna read those stories for myself as well.

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.

Jeff: I’m so glad we brought this book back again for this holiday season. It’s a classic that should be read again and again. If you’ve read “All Through the Night” before, we hope you’ll consider giving it another read to celebrate its inclusion on the “Time Magazine” list. And if you haven’t read it, well, what are you waiting for? Go get it right now.

So let’s get another perspective on the interview and the discussion. Hey, ChatGPT, what did you think of the interview with Suzanne and her family and the discussion of “All Through the Night?”

ChatGPT: In the interview, Suzanne discussed how she shaped Jules’s character to confront stereotypes and broaden understanding among her readers, especially in parts of the country where LGBTQ+ individuals might not be widely accepted. Her strategic approach, introducing Jules as a “witty gay best friend” before building his role, showed her commitment to fostering empathy and acceptance in ways that felt accessible yet transformative for her audience. This journey of bringing Jules and his partner, Robin, to a prominent, complex romance was groundbreaking and rewarding, ultimately culminating in “All Through the Night,” which not only achieved a literary milestone as a bestselling gay romance but also supported MassEquality with all profits from the book.

The discussion of “All Through the Night” itself highlighted how Brockmann masterfully intertwined suspense, romance, and humor. You and Will emphasized the book’s perfect balance: a romance novel that celebrated Jules and Robin’s relationship, embedded within her trademark action-suspense plots. You two beautifully broke down the layers of the story, from the challenges of Jules’s job to the joyful chaos of wedding planning, which is suddenly amplified when the president is set to attend. Brockmann also pulls readers into the couple’s personal challenges—Robin’s struggle with fame and the complexities of blending a personal and public life—while keeping us laughing with the townhouse comedy of errors that injects some lighthearted fun into the narrative.

What struck me the most was Suzanne’s fearless commitment to visibility and equality and how she used her writing not only to entertain but also as activism. In both the interview and discussion, there’s a powerful reminder of the impact literature can have on cultural attitudes. By crafting characters like Jules and Robin with such care, Brockmann bridged the gap between genre romance and societal progress, creating a timeless, inspiring story.

Jeff: You know, we’ve been asking ChatGPT for its thoughts about interviews for a few episodes, but it really nailed it perfectly when it said, “What struck me the most was Suzanne’s fearless commitment to visibility and equality and how she used her writing, not only to entertain, but also as activism.” Yes, absolutely. It’s a great message for all readers and authors of the queer romance genre.

Will: All right. I think that’ll do it for now. Coming up next, on Monday, December 16th, Cale Dietrich joins us to talk about his latest YA romance, “The Rules of Royalty.”

Jeff: This is Cale’s very queer take on “The Princess Diaries,” and it’s a book that I just adored. I loved talking to Cale about it so much. It’s a fun interview that you’re not gonna wanna miss.

Will: On behalf of Jeff and myself, I 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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