Three Stupid Weddings by Ann Gallagher: Exclusive Friday 5-ish Questions and Pre-Release Day Review

On the heels of a painful and long overdue breakup, what Victor Nelson needs is time to lick his wounds. What he doesn’t need is everyone in his family trying to play matchmaker so he can find someone new… which is exactly what they’ll do at the three stupid weddings he has to attend this summer.

Fortunately, it’s Dominic Lowe to the rescue. Dom is more than willing to come along to all the weddings as his best friend’s “boyfriend”… even if he’d much rather be there as Vic’s real boyfriend.

Convincing people they’re a couple is easy. The charade is miserable for Dom, though, after years of being madly in love with Vic. But maybe those three weddings are a rehearsal for the relationship he knows they could have for real.

This asexual M/M romance is approximately 38,000 words long.

Trigger warnings: eating disorder, discussions of verbal/emotional abuse

Amazon – Kindle Unlimited

Thank you to Ann Gallagher, AKA L.A. Witt, for stopping by and answering my Friday 5-ish questions. Her answers are just AMAZE-BALLS!!!!

1. You seem to have plot bunnies, that make more plot bunnies. They seem to replicate like real bunnies! 🙂 Tell us about your inspiration for Three Stupid Weddings.

They really do replicate like real bunnies. I literally have rainbow plot bunnies tattooed on my arm because, well, plot bunnies are my world. I am constantly sending emails to myself with story ideas, jotting notes in my phone’s notepad or on scraps of paper–there are bunnies everywhere, and they always find me.

Three Stupid Weddings came from seeing some tweets from readers who enjoy the “fake boyfriend” trope, and I realized it was one I’d never written before. I’d also been wanting to write another asexual romance, so I started playing with the idea of an ace fake boyfriend. The story pretty much fell together after that.

2. You have several pen names. You chose Ann Gallagher as the pen name for Three Stupid Weddings, even as it is M/M. What makes you choose one pen name over another? Is there a method to this madness?

LOL Oh yeah the pen name madness. It’s…well, madness is a good word. There is a method to the madness, though if I had my career to do over again, I might have done things differently. I didn’t foresee writing so many genres, or that I would branch out into pairings beyond M/M and M/F. Initially it was L.A. Witt for M/M and Lauren Gallagher for M/F, and then I write an M/M/F and realized it wasn’t that simple anymore. So when a book blurs the line between two names, I have to make a decision.  In the case of Three Stupid Weddings, it was actually easy: Ann Gallagher writes sweet romances. Since Three Stupid Weddings has no on-page sex (none off-page either), it was clearly an Ann Gallagher book. Where it gets tricky is when I’m writing a sweeter — but not 100% sweet — romance, and it feels more L.A. Witt than Ann Gallagher. Because heaven forbid I make things easy for myself.

3. Following you on twitter (Peeps! If you don’t you should!) I know you have been doing research on incel, as well as terrible bosses. What can you share about your current WIPs?

The terrible bosses research is for a non-fiction book that I’m hopefully not botching too terribly, and as for the incel research…Oh Lord, I am so glad to be done researching that “community”. That was SUCH a toxic experience. In the end, though, I’m pleased with the resulting suspense novel, INCEL, which will be out later this fall. It’ll be under my fourth pen name, Lori A. Witt, because of course it will. That name used to be exclusively for more mainstream SFF, but I decided to expand to mainstream suspense too; INCEL has a romance subplot, but it’s not really the focus of the book. That and by its very  nature, the subject matter meant delving into some hardcore misogyny and rape culture, and I decided the book (and the other books in the series) should be under the name that focuses less on romance.

Anyway, that book is in edits right now. I’m currently working on a historical novella to go with a Christmas-themed multi-author series later in the year, as well as the final book in my Cruising trilogy (a fluffy M/M trans vacation romance).  My main WIP, however, is a M/M contemporary that will also be playing with the fake boyfriend trope, and I’ve assembled A DREAM TEAM OMG of narrators for the audio version, so I’m basically writing it with their voices in my head. No details on that one yet. 😉

4. Is there a plot bunny that you’ve had that you were afraid/concerned to write, or maybe felt you couldn’t do justice to it, if you did write it? Why?

Oh, there have been a few. Once Burned involved a character who’s an undocumented immigrant at risk of deportation. When I wrote Static waaaaaaay back in like 2012 I was terrified I’d screwed up the genderfluidity, trans characters, etc. I literally had nine trans* beta readers for that one. Lead Me Not, a Christian M/M romance, was definitely a risk for me because I had no idea how anyone — the Christian community, my readers, my Christian readers, etc — would take it.

So yeah, sometimes it’s scary diving into a book, but I’ll usually write it anyway, and just make sure I have someone else read it.

5. Always the fun questions! What cartoon character best represents your personal philosophy?

I’m probably some very weird mix of Sterling Archer and Stewie Griffin…

Ah-stinkin-dorable!

This was short, but oh so sweet. The fake boyfriend trope will just never grow old with me. And because these guys are asexual, there was no drunken sex that they felt guilty about after even though they both wanted it.

Instead it was like a slow romance. Building with each wedding they went to. Best friends who slowly acknowledge that they really are in a relationship and love each other.

The book was separated by wedding, which was fun. Besides the beginning of the story establishing character, the rest of it takes place at each of the three weddings.

There is a little bit of angst with Vic dealing with the repercussions of a caustic relationship he is newly out of, but nothing that bogged down or turned the story serious.

This was the perfect, fluffy, sweet, romantic book that is short enough to be a nice fast read, but in depth enough to make you care about the characters.

4 Pieces of Candy