We had the pleasure of talking to TJ Alexander, author of the upcoming Chef’s Kiss, a deliciously fresh romcom featuring a high-strung pastry chef and their wildly attractive nonbinary kitchen manager she can’t help but fall for. We got to ask TJ about their writing experience, favorite baking recipes and so much more!
Hi, TJ! Thanks so much for joining us today! Why don’t you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
Thank you for having me! I’m TJ, my pronouns are they/them, and I write queer books with kissing. My favorite cocktail is the French 75, and I think dogs wearing coats are pretty darn great.
Lightning round: what is the first book you remember reading, the first pastry you remember eating and the first career path you ever wanted to pursue?
Oh damn! First book I remember reading is Maurice Sendak’s Nutshell Library series, specifically Chicken Soup with Rice (“I love you once, I love you twice, I love you chicken soup with rice” FORMATIVE). First pastry I remember eating was an éclair for breakfast which I was NOT supposed to tell my grandma about because my mom thought it smacked of bad parenting to let me eat so much sugar, but of course I blabbed the second I got back home. And when I was, like, probably four or five I wanted to be a stained glass artist.
What is your go-to baking recipe?
The recipe I probably bake more than any other is brownies. I always have the ingredients in the pantry and I can always toss in whatever I want to get rid of (of the sweet variety. Not, like, sardines. Ew). The recipe I always use is the one attributed to Katherine Hepburn, you can find it all over the internet. They’re super gooey and the butter gets melted, so no waiting for it to soften, which is great.
Tell us about Chef’s Kiss! What can readers expect?
Chef’s Kiss is about two very different people who are forced to work together on a project in a test kitchen. If you like grumpy/sunshine, enemies-to-lovers, food as a love language, mutual pining, and bedsharing for Reasons, I have a feeling you might like this book. Oh, and also it’s queer as hell. I should probably say that right at the jump. Simone, the uptight pastry chef, is a bisexual cis woman and Ray, the golden retriever kitchen manager, is nonbinary.
Chef’s Kiss is your debut novel. What was your writing experience like? Were there challenges you didn’t think you’d face? Likewise, what was a highlight while writing?
My experience was pretty fast and unhealthy, haha! I wrote the first draft in about six weeks during the early days of the pandemic just because I needed something to focus on that wasn’t, you know, abject terror? I’d had the idea for this book for some time but once I finally sat down to work on it, it went very quickly. I think the biggest challenge was deciding how to portray Ray’s identity. I worried about “getting it wrong” or something, and a lot of that came from the fact that I wanted Ray’s experience to reflect some of what my own experience was, namely, that coming out as nonbinary doesn’t necessarily mean coming out to everyone in every facet of your life all at once. So when we first meet Ray, they aren’t out at work, and I had a lot of internalized fear about how people might react to that, but now with the benefit of hindsight, I’m glad I made the decisions I did. A highlight would probably be making myself hungry as I wrote about food. Hard not to think “Dang, I’m good” when that happens!
I loved Simone and Ray’s grumpy meets sunshine dynamic! Without spoiling too much, did you have a favorite scene writing for their story arc?
Ahhhh, I don’t think it’s a spoiler since I already mentioned Ray isn’t out at work at first, so I’ll say my favorite scene of theirs was when Ray comes out to Simone. It was the first scene I wrote, actually. It was the basis of their entire dynamic, that Simone is trying her best to be cool and get things right and react the way she knows Ray wants her to react, and Ray is kind of having a blast watching this person twist herself into knots because it shows Simone cares.
And speaking of grumpy meets sunshine, what are your favorite romance tropes? Which ones are you itching to put your own spin on?
Well, I do love me some “there was only one bed” and fake dating. Those are top tier tropes. I cannot wait to tackle those. Oh, and employer/employee romances? I don’t know, I think there’s something I could do there. That’s a rich vein. And second chance romances! I am chomping at the bit to write that. Basically I would like to do it all, please and thank you.
I love how Chef’s Kiss discusses what it means to be an ally to the LGBTQIAP+ community. What do you want readers to take away from Simone and Ray’s respective struggles (and empowerment)?
I really hope that cis and trans/nonbinary readers alike come away from Chef’s Kiss seeing that we (trans and nonbinary folks) are lovable, and loved, and lovely. For me, it was a healing exercise to write a story where a nonbinary person is a love interest who is wanted, and isn’t made into some tragic object who has to deal with all this up close and personal pain. Yeah, there is pain and heartache, but that’s not incompatible with that Happily Ever After. I hope readers see that. That’s more important to me than learning how to use someone’s pronouns–don’t get me wrong, that’s also important, but it doesn’t matter how good someone is at remembering my pronouns if they don’t understand that I’m a whole and complete person worthy of respect.
Both Ray and Simone are such vibrant characters that jump off the page – and Ray is definitely not one to hold back with their enthusiasm! So I’m curious: what are songs that get them hyped immediately?
Oh no! This is where my complete lack of musical knowledge is really going to show. The only thing I can say for certain is that Ray’s go-to workout song is Max Frost’s Adderall. They would have little dances that went with it, for sure.
With Chef’s Kiss releasing soon, are you already working on other projects? If so, care to share a tidbit about them with us?
I can say that I am working on Book 2, which will also be a foodie romcom, and very, very queer. That should be coming out this time next year. I’m also diving into some queer historical romance projects, fingers crossed on that.
Last but not least, do you have any book recommendations for our readers?
Boy, do I! First of all, I can’t forget to shoutout Alison Cochran’s The Charm Offensive, which was the most fun read I had last year. Anita Kelly’s Love & Other Disasters is also a nonbinary cooking-related romance, so if you like Chef’s Kiss you need that book in your life. And Georgia Clark’s Island Time, which is coming out this summer, is such a delight, I really loved it.
