Introducing Book 4 (!!!)

I’m thinking of a galette.

Not a fancy one. No pâte feuilletée, just a simple fruit filling and a rough crust folded over on four sides for shape and structure. When I started contemplating how to explain everything my fourth book is to me, I could almost taste this galette. Apricot filling, lemon zest, clove, egg wash, cinnamon sugar, and those untidy walls of pastry holding it all together.  

The first fold of dough would be the concept of romance as a pleasure genre. A good romance can do a lot of things—illuminate, transgress, teach you the number of eyelets in a period-accurate corset—but the only thing it has to do is give the reader pleasure. Isn’t that incredible? A whole mode of art with that primary purpose? Once, I’d have felt obligated to justify my work as more than that, as if romcoms about queer people had to serve some greater good to be allowed to exist. Now, I hold pleasure in much higher esteem. I think we all should. I think a lot of us probably need to repair our relationship with pleasure, and a romance novel might be the best place to do that. So, I decided I wanted to write a book that first and foremost was about pleasure in every form.

The second fold is maximalism. Depriving yourself of nothing, having anything and everything you want. At some point I thought, how much book can I squeeze into this book? I wanted it to read the way a long trip through Europe feels, sumptuous and indulgent, beyond satiated and close to passing out from all five senses being 24/7 filled with a million things. Why hold anything back? Why settle for one POV when I could have two? Why not two epigraphs and a prologue and a map and a mid-book interlude and half a dozen sex scenes and yet another detailed description of a meal and an epilogue? So, the second pastry wall holding this thing together is the desire for the most of everything.

The third fold is, well, bisexuality. Broadly, a question I’ve asked myself after writing three books with bisexual protagonists: what do I have to write for people to actually call one of these a bisexual novel? More specifically, though, I’m so interested in the stereotype of the slutty bisexual in fiction, and I wanted to rejig it. What if, for some, bisexuality does manifest as being a slut? What is so terrible about being sensual or embodied or horny or just plain old promiscuous, when you have access to the full range of human sexuality and the freedom to fuck around? What about all the ways that interacts with gender? What if I wrote a book where my characters are slutty bisexuals, and they like that about themselves, because it’s expansive and interesting and fun?

And the last wall of this horny little galette is the simplest and most selfish one: Things I Like. I love travel and eating and drinking good wine, I love thinking about recipes and ingredients, I love Italian renaissance art and hot people and old churches. If the category is indulgence, writing this book was my indulgence.

All of that pastry is wrapped around this beautiful, glossy, fruity (see what I did there) filling—the story itself and the two characters who lead it.

Which brings us to why you’re actually here. No more pastry metaphors in this newsletter, I promise. Let’s talk about this book.

I could not be happier or prouder to introduce you to my fourth book, coming August 6, 2024: THE PAIRING.

Here is the official blurb from my publisher, Macmillan:

In #1 New York Times bestselling author Casey McQuiston’s latest romantic comedy, two bisexual exes accidentally book the same European food and wine tour and challenge each other to an international hookup competition to prove they’re over each other. And they are over each other, right?

And here is a little more from me:

Theo is the assistant sommelier at the only Michelin-starred restaurant in Palm Springs. Kit is a chef pâtissier at a luxury hotel in Paris. But before that, they were lifelong best friends turned lovers who planned to spend the rest of their lives together, pursuing their shared love of food and drink. They booked the European food and wine tour of their dreams, boarded their transatlantic flight, and broke up before they even reached their first destination.

That was four years ago, and they haven’t spoken since—until they both unknowingly book a solo do-over ticket on the same tour and find themselves trapped on a bus with each other for three weeks through the most beautiful sights and flavors of France, Spain, and Italy.

They can handle it, though. Four years is a long time. They can peacefully coexist. In fact, you know what would alleviate some of the tension? A friendly competition to see who can bed the highest number of sexy locals along the way. Surely this won’t complicate anything or stir up any lingering feelings between Theo and Kit. Everything is delicious, and everything is fine.

Friends, readers: I had the time of my life writing this book. I spent a year immersing myself in it, traveling, indulging, reading poetry, looking at art, taking duolingo courses, painting watercolors, baking from scratch, zooming around google maps, going to wine classes, everything I could do to feel what Theo and Kit feel. I mean, it’s a dirty job, but somebody has got to do it.

Every book I write, I try to push myself to do better than the one before, and every book until now, I’ve felt like I spent most of the process reaching for what a good book might be. This manuscript was the first time I felt like I was standing over what I was trying to write and putting pieces into place deliberately. I read more widely than I ever have, experimented with structure and form, drafted by hand, pushed myself to act like I deserve the opportunity to create it. I wanted to stop worrying about being an imposter and write as if I saw myself as an artist. The result is: my favorite book to date.

The main two characters you’ll find in this book are a hot nonbinary jock who loves ‘80s action movies (Theo) and an ethereal half-French romantic elf-prince who recites poetry (Kit). A few more things you’ll find:

• A sexy Italian tour guide named Fabrizio

• At least one sheep

• Many, many erotic descriptions of food and drink

• Unprecedented amounts of smut (for my body of work, at least

• Ruminations on gender while staring at The Birth of Venus

• Influences including such great artists as: Rilke, Forster, Tolkien, Botticelli, Bourdain, Swayze, Caravaggio, Cezanne, Henry James, and Keanu Reeves in Point Break

God, I love this book. I hope you will too. I cannot wait for you to read it. If it sounds like your jam (or your jambon), you can preorder it right now.