GUEST POST: Jo Ramsey of 'Midnight Chat'
Title: Midnight Chat
Author: Jo Ramsey
Published: February 7, 2017
Publisher: Harmony Ink Press (An Imprint of Dreamspinner Press)
Cover Artist: Aaron Anderson
Genre: Contemporary Romance; Young Adult
Length: 180 Pages
Tags: Lesbian; F/F; CW: Bullying
About Midnight Chat
For the past two years, since meeting in ninth grade, Mira MacDonald and Rob Stevens have been inseparable best friends. Rob’s struggles with depression, and his reliance on Mira, sometimes make the friendship difficult for Mira, but she wants to support Rob. Especially since he’s the victim of severe bullying at school due to his sexuality. Even though Rob isn’t out, he is gay, and the suspicion is enough for some people to torment him.
Now Mira has her first girlfriend, Talia Acevedo, and Rob’s jealousy is becoming even more of a problem. Rob insists that Talia doesn’t like him and is trying to break up their friendship. Mira tries to stay neutral, but it isn’t easy when Rob’s obsession with her escalates—along with his anger as the harassment gets worse.
One night, during one of their typical midnight text sessions, Rob tells Mira he’s decided to take drastic action at school to stop the bullying once and for all. And if she tries to stop him or tells anyone else, she’ll be first on his target list.
New Love vs. Old Friend
A new relationship is exciting. Everything seems shiny. Your new partner is the best person ever, and surely this relationship will be as wonderful as they are. You want to spend all your time with them, and you talk about them constantly.
Your best friend, of course, is the one you talk to the most about your new partner….but at the same time, it seems like you aren’t seeing or talking to your friend nearly as often as you used to. They aren’t around when you have opportunity to talk. Your new partner should get most of your time, right? So you try to squeeze your friend into the time slots you have left, and they just don’t work out.
It’s sad. You never thought your friend would be jealous of one of your partners. There’s no romantic interest between you at all, so what do they have to be jealous of? They should be happy for you. Maybe they aren’t such a good friend after all, if they’re acting this petty just because you’re spending more time with your partner than with them.
Balancing a new relationship with existing connections isn’t always easy. When I was in high school, as I remember, it was even more difficult than as an adult. I dated a guy for only three weeks, and in that time completely lost one of my closest friends. Not only was I giving up time with her in favor of time with my new boyfriend, but she was friends with him well before I met him. In fact, I met him through her.
She wasn’t interested in him as anything more than a friend, but he, too, set her aside to spend time with me. She didn’t think he was a good person for me to date (as it turned out, she was right), so she gave up on me. When the guy broke up with me, my friend didn’t answer her phone. Or her door.
I saw that happen with classmates as well. Someone would start seeing somebody new, and then that someone would be arguing in the hall with their best friend about not having time anymore. Often, the arguments included the person telling their friend, “You’re just jealous that they’re with me and not you,” followed by someone stomping off down the hall.
Sometimes they mended the friendship later. In one case I recall clearly, because of how unusual it seemed, the person invited her friend to also date the guy, and that seemed to work out pretty well for all three of them.
But sometimes, the friendship was lost, and sometimes things get worse than a simple argument and stomp-away.
In my new novel Midnight Chat, Rob has leaned on his best friend Mira since they started high school. Mira tries to shield him from bullies, and she’s the only one who knows how bad the bullying really is. Neither of them is straight, so they have no romantic interest in each other. Only friendship, but a strong, intense friendship.
They’ve been nearly inseparable for two years, but now Mira has her first girlfriend, Talia. As far as Rob’s concerned, Talia is stealing Mira from him. Mira doesn’t have time for him anymore, because she’s either working or out with Talia. To Rob, Talia is no better than the bullies. Even worse, because she’s taking his only support system away.
Midnight Chat is written primarily from Mira’s point of view. We see her arguing with Rob about how much time she spends with Talia. We see some of the snarky things Rob says about Talia, and interactions between the two of them show that Mira is very much caught in the middle between two people she cares about deeply, who can’t stand each other.
But Midnight Chat also includes short journal entries from Rob, in which the reader sees how angry he is with Talia. He blames her entirely for Mira’s lack of time. And as his overall mental health deteriorates, the anger and hatred he focuses on Talia grow stronger and begin to spill over, at least in his mind, onto Mira.
Mira has choices to make, and choosing between her best friend and her girlfriend is the least of them.
About the Author
Jo Ramsey is a former special education teacher who now writes full time. She firmly believes that everyone has it in them to be a hero, whether to others or in their own lives, and she tries to write books that encourage teens to be themselves and make a difference. Jo has been writing since age five and has been writing young adult fiction since she was a teen herself; her first YA book was published in 2010. She lives in Massachusetts with her two daughters, her husband, and two cats, one of whom likes to read over her shoulder.
For more works from Jo visit her website.
