A love that doesn’t shout

Why I’ve been writing a quiet m/m romance

We live in a loud world. Loud notifications, loud opinions, declarations of love shouted across parking lots.

There’s a place for that kind of romance, and I’ve written it myself. But I’ve always been drawn to the quiet love stories, from Johannes Tralow’s Irene of Trapezunt to Patricia Correll’s Late Summer, Early Spring. Stories where devotion is implied and declarations are made in glances and half-sentences, but that stay with me from season to season.

When I dreamed up Until the Last Leaf Falls —while out on a stress-busting autumn walk—I sensed a love story that unfolds the way autumn does: gradually, gently, and entirely without permission from anyone watching.

First, I met Niles. He built a wildly successful library app, then walked away from the noise of running it to open an actual library in a converted posting house — three barns, a courtyard, and more silence than one person should have to sit in. He keeps trying to make connections, keeps reaching out, but he’s spent so long being ‘invisible’, he no longer expects people to reach back. He talks to his trees because they’re the only ones who ever seem to listen.

Then there’s Orren. He turns up in the glade one autumn morning in clothes that make him look like autumn personified and with a habit of noticing things about Niles. He’s patient in a way that feels ancient, because — as it turns out — it is. He is warm, tactile, and entirely unhurried, the kind of presence that makes silence feel like company instead of absence.

What drew me to writing their romance this way — built on small touches, hot chocolate, and companionable silence in a library — was the tenderness in those quiet moments. Niles and Orren don’t fall for each other over grand gestures. They fall for each other over shared lunches in a glade, over a hand resting on a hand and staying there, over being asked ‘are you all right?’ by someone who actually wants to know the answer.

There is an ache running under all of it, because Orren can’t stay past the season and the rules that bind him mean he may never see Niles again. While Niles knows he’ll be lonely again when Orren leaves—unless he can craft a way that lets Orren return.

If you’re looking for a love story that feels like a late autumn day — golden, unhurried, and tinged with sadness and magic — I hope you’ll find a home for Niles and Orren’s story in your autumn reading pile.