Introducing Still in Love
Heartfelt LGBTQ+ stories of love, hope, and second chances
Today, I am proud to introduce Still in Love, a new Substack publication devoted to LGBTQ+ love stories, both imagined and true. It will become the third publication under the J. H. Irwin name, joining Still Human and The Augmented Life, while offering a distinct home for stories centered on love, commitment, longing, resilience, and the lives we build together.
Inside Still in Love, readers will find original serialized novels, novellas, short stories, historical love stories, treasured letters, and remarkable accounts drawn from real LGBTQ+ lives. Some stories will celebrate first love, unexpected romance, later-in-life connection, and second chances. Others will preserve relationships from history that endured despite distance, secrecy, persecution, loss, or a world that refused to recognize them fully.
This publication is also deeply personal to me. On February 22, 2027, my husband, Tray, and I will celebrate thirty years together. Our life has included the same joys, disagreements, sacrifices, laughter, grief, compromises, and ordinary routines experienced by couples everywhere. We have built a home, cared for one another, faced difficult seasons, celebrated milestones, and grown older side by side.
Love between two men or two women is not an exception to the human experience. It is part of the human experience. LGBTQ+ couples fall in love, build families, raise children or choose not to, weather disappointment, care for aging parents, endure illness, and hold one another through life’s most painful moments. Yet we also carry an additional burden because our relationships have too often been questioned, politicized, denied legitimacy, or treated as less deserving of protection.
That is one reason these stories matter so much now. LGBTQ+ lives are frequently reduced to political arguments, cultural conflict, or harmful stereotypes. Those battles are real, and they cannot be ignored, but they are not the entirety of our existence. We also laugh, flirt, dream, make mistakes, forgive, begin again, and create lives filled with ordinary moments that become extraordinary because they are shared.
Still in Love will document and celebrate those lives with honesty, dignity, warmth, and heart. Some stories will be fictional. Others will come from history or lived experience. Not every true story will have a happy ending, because history did not always treat LGBTQ+ people kindly. Still, every story will honor the love that existed and the courage it took to live it.
The Still in Love Promise
Every story honors love. Every journey is told with honesty and heart. Every page celebrates the enduring power of love.
I hope Still in Love becomes a place readers return to when they want to be moved, comforted, surprised, or reminded that love has always been present, even when the world tried to erase it. Whether you have shared your life with someone for decades, are still waiting for love to find you, or simply believe these stories deserve to be preserved, I would be honored to have you join me.
Welcome to Still in Love.
J. H. Irwin
