In an exclusive interview with GVN, celebrated author Joe Jiménez delves into the inspiration and creative process behind his latest novel, “Hot Boy Summer.” Known for his evocative storytelling and rich character development, Jiménez offers readers a behind-the-scenes look at the themes and narratives that shape his work. As “Hot Boy Summer” continues to captivate audiences with its vibrant depiction of summer romance and personal growth, Jiménez discusses the cultural influences, personal experiences, and literary ambitions that brought this compelling story to life.

Hello Joe! Thank you for agreeing to speak with Geek Vibes Nation. Can you start by telling us about yourself and your upcoming novel?

Hi, GVN! I’m Joe Jiménez. I’m a dog dad who loves breakfast tacos, Drag Race, and energy drinks. I currently live in San Antonio, Texas. My family has two rescue Boxers-– Harper Lynn and Sweet Baby Ray—both of whom we adopted through the Austin Boxer Rescue. I’m a Leo. My vibe is big sky, basketball shorts, dog walks, gym, circuit music, late nights with my best friends, rewatching iconic lip syncs 1,000 times, and of course, bacon and egg tacos.

My most recent book is Hot Boy Summer, a young adult novel about four very gay bffs from San Antonio, Texas—Mac, Mikey, Flor, and Cammy—all joining together the summer before their Senior Year to bond over breakfast tacos, pop music remixes, and their mutual love of the iconic Ariana Grande and international drag superstar Valentina. It’s giving very high school friend group drama, with explosive group chats, excessive hashtags, and a character fluent in the art of keeping receipts. 

I read that you’ve worked as a high school teacher for over a decade. How did your experience as a teacher influence the writing of your novel, Hot Boy Summer?

In the opening chapter of Hot Boy Summer, Mac, Mikey, Flor, and Cammy are presenting their final exams for their eleventh grade English class. Their end-of-year assessment tasks students with writing a letter to a celebrity or public figure whom you want to do something, to keep doing something, or not to do something, and to write this letter demonstrating your understanding of how rhetorical techniques can be used to convey messages. It’s classic project-based learning, and it’s summative, and it’s giving very 11th grade English, or at least the kind of English class run by my most effective teachers—Mrs. Shaver, Mrs. Hedtke, and Mrs. Vance—learning which these days can feel like a total French Vanilla Fantasy since so many of our classes, at least from my experience, are driven by standardized assessments.

In my twenty years of classroom experience, I’ve seen the most meaningful student learning expressed via projects such as the teacher-designed letter assignment designed by Mr. Villarreal. As the characters in Hot Boy Summer present their writings to the class, Flor bravely reads his letter to international drag superstar Valentina, underscoring the vital role people like Valentina play in the lives of so many of us who are experiencing isolation, loneliness, and hate. Flor talks about feeling affirmed and validated by Valentina during a vulnerable moment in his life, a connection which fosters a sense of purpose, a sense of belonging, and as the second-ranked student in his class, Flor “110 abso” understands the assignment, using rhetorical techniques like parallel structure, colloquialisms, and shift. Flor’s letter and all the feels Flor’s honesty brings with it serve as the catalyst for Mac, Mikey, Flor, and Cammy becoming friends. 

Here, Mr. Villarreal’s project-based assessment made learning relevant in a way that a multiple-choice test, which certainly has its own merits, would not be able to. In this way, Hot Boy Summer Chapter 1 serves #classroomrealness, which was important to me since oftentimes pop culture paints young people to be checked-out of their education and so uncaring and detached about learning, when I’ve had the opposite experience—I’ve seen students highly-engaged in their learning and wanting to do well for themselves and for their communities and to ultimately make the world a better place for many different kinds of people. 

I love the representation in this novel. Not only does it center queer characters, but they are also people of color. Could you talk about why that was important to you?

I wanted to write a joyful book, and I wanted to imagine what life would be like for my three best friends and me if we were back in high school today. I didn’t have a great experience in high school, and in many ways Hot Boy Summer is my response to the bullying and hate I faced at school and at home when I was growing up. In this way, if I was 17 or 18 today, I’d have a group of gay friends and our best girlfriends to stand at my side if people walked behind me, as they did when I was in high school, talking about how they wanted to go out and “kill some faggots”. 

For me, representation is important because it shows us possibilities. Joyfulness, hope, belonging—these are all elements of human experience that we can see more of, particularly when expressed by characters whom we do not traditionally see embodying these parts of humanness. Here, in Hot Boy Summer, it was especially important to me to feature an Asian-American romantic lead, and I remember during the Pandemic seeing these news stories about anti-Asian and anti-Asian-American sentiment and hate crimes. My best friends are Filipino-American, and knowing they were hurting and angry and wanting to offer something that might help, I remembered listening to my good friend Howie once talk about representations of Asian-American men being so limiting, and so, thinking about the people I know and love, I created the character of Michaelangelo Villanueva who is so many of the things I know my friends to be—confident, strong, funny, loyal, smart, handsome, proud, stylish, driven—and I think Mac would “110 abso,” to use Mac’s words, be into a guy like Mikey. In this way, DJ Mike Villanueva gives Mac a new look at all the good things that life has to offer him, and also, in turn, Mikey gives readers a new look, too, at solidarity and how images of Asian-American men in pop culture can shift to give more realness.   

Mac is a down-to-earth and relatable protagonist. How did you craft the character’s distinct voice?

I’m waaaaay into sentences and language, and I’m especially interested in all the ways we use language to reveal things about ourselves like our values, where we’re from, and groups to which we belong. Maybe it’s connecting with people by calling them “bro” or “girl,” or maybe it’s using specialized terms for the things we love, like knowing what the “Snatch Game” or a “Double Shantay” means, which only other people who know and love those things would understand or maybe it’s sharing common slang and colloquial talk with people who are from the places we’re from—if I’m ever not in Texas, I love hearing people say “y’all” and “fixing to” as much as I love being at a party and hearing another language being spoken and then suddenly a word like “fierce” or “bishhh” or “werk” punctuated by laughter and joy—and I hope that in Hot Boy Summer Mac’s language does all of these things, because I wanted Mac to represent a love for allowing ourselves to be a mix of so many things rather than feeling like we have to pick and deny any part of ourselves so that another part may shine. Do I think Mac and his friends overdo it with “girl”? OMG. Yes. A lot. But for me, that’s part of the beauty when humans feel belonging. We get excited when we first connect, those moments when, for many of us, we first feel that we belong. I wanted Mac and his friend group to reflect this animo for finding your people.

Also, as I was building Mac’s voice, it was important for me to embrace Mac’s working-class background, and in highlighting Mac’s awareness of the world, of course, he’s going to notice things that somebody who grows up without might notice. This is especially true with the frictions that happen when he makes friends with people from different social classes. Mac’s a working-class guy from a working-class family, and his new friends—Mikey, an aspiring DJ, hightop afficionado, and gym fiend, and Flor, an affluent fashionista with an enviable collection of designer bags—sometimes see the world in ways that although they’re all queer still feels worlds apart from Mac’s experience. Whether it’s Flor making hyper-judgey comments about car culture or assuming Mac has lots of spending money because he works all these hours, or Mikey’s real kindness in sharing clothes and shoes with Mac because he knows Mac doesn’t have a lot (as very sweet friends with more have done for me in the past), I think social class can make us feel weird and combustible things sometimes, which is understandable, and so, our responses to situations where friction arises is where I’ve witnessed real transformation occur. In Hot Boy Summer, I wanted Mac to show ways that we can challenge assumptions about class in our friend group while Flor and Mikey reflect ways to listen and not be so defensive when someone points out a miscue or a different perspective on real stuff in life. 

The novel also has great supporting characters. I grew to love Cammy, Flor, and Mikey just as much as I loved Mac. What do you think are the keys to creating great secondary characters? Were there any challenges to creating Mac’s friend group?

Thanks for the love for the supporting characters in Hot Boy Summer. While Cammy and her main character energy might challenge your classification of her as a “supporting” character, Flor thinks “secondary” is just perfect for Cam. You’ve called it exactly like it is! 

For me, the main challenge in creating Mac’s friend group was giving too much. Early drafts of chapters were giving a kind of chaos similar to herding cats, which sure, had great energy and some shady, funny reads between Flor and Cammy, yet, the writing wasn’t really all that friendly for a reader since there was soooo much going on with Cammy and Flor going at each other, constantly competing for attention. And while I wanted to keep that tension between Cam and Flor, I didn’t want that tension to overpower the story or Mac. What I learned was to focus my scenes on what each character wants from that moment and to consider what they just wanted, lost, or gained in the previous scenes and what they would be wanting, losing, or gaining in the moments to come.

This is one of the most valuable lessons on character-making that I’ve learned, and I learned it from Christian Trimmer, the wonderful editor I worked with at MTV Books. This approach also helped me create a more cohesive story rather than just writing a bunch of scenes I liked and then trying to glue them together and call it a book. Trust me, I’ve done that, though I know better now thanks to Christian and his keen commitment to editing and for teaching. 

Additionally, I also found that a key to making effective secondary characters is not to be afraid to get it wrong, which is good writing advice period. Take some risks, try new things, flesh out new directions for characters like giving them a choice where they make an unexpected decision and see where it takes you. If it takes you some place good, awesome. If not, that’s what revision is for, I think. 

What would you say is the biggest takeaway for young adults who read Hot Boy Summer?

#hopeandbelonging

As I was working on Hot Boy Summer, I kept a Post-it next to my desk that read: #hopeandbelonging. At the end of the day, this is what I hope readers take from the novel. As humans, I think we all, on some level, have a need and a want to connect, to relate, to feel embraced, to belong. I think we all carry that desire to be a part of something with others—friendships, teams, family, chosen family, relationships, bonds— whatever it looks like, this process isn’t always easy, and it can be messy and difficult as much as it can be joyful and bring goodness to the world. 

Hot Boy Summer is about the joy of finally connecting with people so that you can be yourself and not be afraid of being shunned or humiliated. For readers who already have these connections, I hope Mac, Mikey, Flor, and Cammy affirm the need to cherish and protect our chosen families and to include and welcome others, and for those who are struggling with loneliness, I hope this story offers the hope that better days are ahead, because when we surround ourselves with the people who love us unconditionally, that’s the good stuff—call if forgiveness, call it love, call it joy or family or acceptance or hope, it’s what I think life should be like for everybody.  

What was the most difficult part of writing this novel? What was most enjoyable?

Easily, time management was the most difficult part of writing Hot Boy Summer. It’s not that I really mismanage or squander time. Not at all. Like a lot of people today, I have 10 million things on my plate at any given time, and so, I struggled to organize my tasks in a way that allowed me to be effective at home, at work, and with my writing, not to mention to carve out quality time for Baby Ray and Harper, who is la consentida of the house and especially demanding. 

I work full-time as a high school English teacher in an IB Diploma Programme, which is quite rigorous for both students and for teachers. When I was struggling, I remembered times in my life when I’ve had to dig deep and keep my head on right because survival really was the only option, and I think for people who’ve had it rough in life, there’s that extra gear we can often switch on when we need to get shit done, especially when odds are stacked against us and when there’s not a lot of support to lift us up. I’m glad I can access this gear—I certainly needed it.

So far, the most enjoyable part of writing Hot Boy Summer most definitely has been listening to the audiobook narrated by the fabulous Avi Roque. The only audiobook I’d really listened to before was the Britney Spears memoir, which I lived for, and with my limited experience with audiobooks, I wasn’t sure how exactly I’d feel about listening to my characters brought to life, so I was absolutely thrilled as I stood at the kitchen counter getting ready for the gym and first listened to Avi’s interpretation of Mac, Mikey, Flor, and Cammy. And while seeing the book promo materials like a Hot Boy Summer beach towel, a billboard in Times Square, and an Instagram sticker are super-sweet experiences, I don’t think anything has brought me the kind of joy that listening to Avi Roque deliver Flor’s speech about “The Rules” or Cam’s fight with Flor over Ariana’s iconic high-top ponytail has brought me.

You’re also an acclaimed poet. How does your poetry writing influence your prose and vice versa?

I’m a little bit a lot obsessed with language, and I think training in making poems helped me feel more comfortable with taking risks in prose, particularly with sentence structures and sounds and images, too. Whether it’s rewriting a sentence or a scene a few more times or cutting pieces and parts of chapters to reorder a narrative, I’ve learned from poetry that I should not see the things I make as too precious to remake or set aside for later or altogether get rid of, and simultaneously, I’ve learned from poetry that sometimes we can mine our writing for little gems and fixtures that can be used in other things we’re making, and so, my revising process sometimes reminds me of the pick-and-pull junk yard across the street from my grandma’s house where I grew up in South Texas—you go there and look around and find parts you need and then run off with an image or a phrase or a chunk of sentences to fix something up so that it works again or so that it becomes something new. 

Do you have any advice for aspiring writers?

A long time ago, I overheard the advice that if we want to write, don’t get too caught up in getting published but focus instead on fine-tuning our skills, on building our craft and growing as storytellers and poem-makers or whichever genre we’re working in. If we focus on developing our craft, then, our writing will evolve, and that’s how we make the good stuff, the stories and poems and essays that we’re meant to be writing, and we’ll be writing these texts in the ways that they need to be written. 

At the time, it all sounded so up-in-the-air, this idea of grinding and hustling so that one day when the idea for a character or a story fell out of the sky, I’d be ready not just to catch it but to carry it, to treat it the way it needed to be treated to deliver the messages about human concerns that good, meaningful literature is supposed to deliver. Over the years when I’ve thought about this advice, I can see that much of this really just asks us to see what happens when we put our egos aside and focus on doing the work, which isn’t new advice for artists at all. 

Another piece of advice is that “Everybody needs a Joan Crawford. You just gotta know when to invite her to the table.” With our writing, there’s always so much to learn if we are willing to be lifelong learners, and so, I say be open to feedback and critiques, and yet, at the same time, know when to call in Joan Crawford and to fight for the things you need to fight for. Knowing the difference, I suppose that’s where wisdom kicks in. 

Can you tell us about what you’re working on next?

Of course. Thanks for the love for Hot Boy Summer and for Mac, Mikey, Flor, and Cammy as they give it and live it this summer. As for my next project, I’m currently working on a novel called Everywhere He Goes. It’s about a guy named Matty who’s a little bit a lot so very high-maintenance and who goes with his sister to spend the summer with their gay uncle living in a small town in Texas so that their mom can take a break. Everywhere He Goes explores intergenerational tensions in the LGBTQ community—so many people assume we can all just get along because we have this human bond of being queer, yet, as many of us know, this isn’t always the case. 

In particular, I’m writing about friction we experience when members of the community feel misunderstood and even dismissed by other generations—this definitely works in both directions of the age spectrum. A personal connection I bring to the writing is feeling out of touch with a younger queer member of my family and how I feel that I’ve failed by not always knowing the correct language to use or how I haven’t done enough to share history about the grief and suffering and losses so many of us experienced in the past in order to gain basic rights and freedoms we have now. It’s complicated, and feelings can get hurt, and yet, at the same time, there’s so much opportunity for learning, transformation, and solidarity. For me, the kind of stories I want to make reflect real things happening in our world while offering some ways that we might make the world a better place for everybody, not just for people like us. 

 Where can our readers connect with you online?

I’m mostly an IG guy, though I’m also on Threads and X. 

Follow me at joejimenez_writ  

Or visit my website: joejimenez.net

Bonus Question: Please assign yearbook superlatives to Mac, Cammy, Flor, and Mikey

OMG! I love love love this one. Okay. Naturally, Flor volunteered to make this happen, so here goes…

Flor’s Super-Superlatives

Most Loyal, Best Dog Dad, Most Likely to Drive a Truck: Mac

Most Likely to DJ at Miami’s Winter Party Festival Beach Party and also Biggest Gym Bunny and Most Likely to Be an IG Influencer: DJ Mike Villanueva

Best Dressed, also Most Likely to Succeed, and also Best Hair 24/7 on the Reals Giving It Muggy: Flor

Biggest Gossip: Cam

*After hearing that Flor was making superlatives, Cammy decided to make her own

superlatives for the group:

Cam’s Best and Most List aka The One and Only List that Matters

Most Likely to Wear Herself Out: Mac

Most Likely to Go to the Gym 5 Times a Day: Mikey

Most Delulu (jk), also Most Likely to Get Offended by a Joke and Most Toxica (jk): Flor

Best Dancer, also Most Likely to Be on TV, also Most Likely to Own Her Own Business by the Time She’s 25, also Best Dressed, also Biggest Starpower, also Most Clout and Most Likely to Win RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 20: Me

About The Author

Joe Jiménez is the author of the poetry collection Rattlesnake Allegory and the young adult novels Hot Boy Summer and Bloodline. He was the recipient of the 2016 Letras Latinas/Red Hen Press Poetry Prize, and he was awarded a Lucas Artists Literary Artists Fellowship. His writing has appeared on the PBS NewsHour and Lambda Literary sites. Joe lives in San Antonio, Texas, where he is a high school English teacher and a member of the Macondo Writers Workshop. Learn more at JoeJimenez.net.

About The Book

Four gay teens in Texas have the summer of their lives while discovering important truths about realness, belonging, and friendship in this joyful young adult contemporary novel for fans of Adam Silvera and Becky Albertalli.

Mac has never really felt like he belonged. Definitely not at home—his dad’s politics and toxic masculinity make a real connection impossible. He thought he fit in on the baseball team, but that’s only because he was pretending to be someone he wasn’t. Finding his first gay friend, Cammy, was momentous; finally, he could be his authentic self around someone else. But as it turned out, not really. Cammy could be cruel, and his “advice” often came off way harsh.

And then, Mac meets Flor, who shows him that you can be both fierce and kind, and Mikey, who is superhot and might maybe think the same about him. Over the course of one hot, life-changing summer, Mac will stand face-to-face with desire, betrayal, and letting go of shame, which will lead to some huge discoveries about the realness of truly belonging.

Told in Mac’s infectious, joyful, gay AF voice, Hot Boy Summer serves a tale as important as hope itself: four gay teens doing what they can to connect and have the fiercest summer of their lives. New friendships will be forged, hot boys will be kissed…and girl, the toxic will be detoxed.

Hot Boy Summer can be purchased online and in bookstores everywhere.