E-Mail This Article to a Friend INCURABLE ROMENTICS Gay love stories BY KRISTEN LOMBARDI

It’s for all those gay men who believe in the happily ever after — yet don’t want to take the straight path to get there. At least, that’s how Scott Whittier describes the hottest literary trend to hit Boston: romance novels for gay men. Whittier, 29, an advertising copywriter, and his real-life partner, Scott Pomfret, a 35-year-old attorney, launched the fledgling line out of their South End home last November after a year of preparation. Since then, the two have collaborated on four novels (Razor Burn, Spare Parts, Nick of Time, and Hot Sauce). They’ve set up a Web site (www.romentics.com) to sell their bodice rippers. They’ve even convinced Warner Books to publish their latest masterpiece, Hot Sauce, and distribute it in bookstores in June 2005. The Phoenix caught up with Whittier and Pomfret, who bill themselves as Scott & Scott, to talk about the emerging world of gay romance.

Q: What inspired Romentics?

Scott W: My mother and grandmother both read pulpy Harlequin romances. They write things like "Good!" and "Cute!" on the inside. Once I asked them, "Why aren’t you reading a better book?" They said it was fun, entertaining reading. You know how it’s going to end. It makes you happy. You can do it on the beach or a bus. I started thinking about it and said, "That’s what we don’t have in gay bookstores." You can buy erotica or self-help. But none of this fun, happily-ever-after stuff.

Q: Aren’t romance novels a women’s genre?

Scott P: There are plenty of gay men out of the closet as gay men but still in the closet as romantics. Look at the stories on the same-sex-marriage issue. There’s a boatload of gay guys who are looking for Mr. Right. And, judging from the e-mails we get, about 30 percent of our audience is straight female. They seem to love the eroticism of the male body and the tenderness of male heroes. I think they have gay friends for whom they would like to find a Romentics hero.

Q: What makes for a juicy romance novel?

Scott W: It’s a basic formula. You have two characters intensely attracted to each other, but it can’t all work out in the beginning. They have to encounter all these obstacles, and that’s your plot. What’s different, of course, is we’re dealing with two men.

Scott P: Scott has left out one of the most important elements, and that is the erotic. It typically shows up early in the story, and it’s typically hot.

Q: Now that gay men can marry, is there more need for romance novels?

Scott W: Perhaps. There’s an interesting progression in gay literature. Over the years, it’s been used as a benchmark of social development. You have the how-to-come-out books, the AIDS books.

Scott P: In the pre-Stonewall era, there was gay pulp about secret gay encounters.

Scott W: Gay literature has always been on the edge. Today, as we’re evolving, we have less need for erotica and self-help. We need something that shows romantic relationships, people coupling and building families together.

Q: Has writing about romance kept it alive for you two?

Scott W: Sure. The most romantic thing is that we wake up in the morning and sit typing together. Or we go on vacation and pull out the laptops together.

Scott P: Now we can treat our vacations as research. We’re going to do romantic New England escapes in Algonquin, Vermont, and P-town.

Q: What’s the most romantic thing that’s happened to you?

Scott P: We had a five-day whirlwind tour in New Orleans for our first anniversary. It was beautiful, and we ate like kings and danced all night.

Scott W: St. Croix was nice, too. That day on our private beach, which we had to hike a mile to get to. It was amazing, like being stranded on a desert island.

Q: You’ve proven quite prolific. Ever afraid of running out of material?

Scott P: Definitely not. If anything, the ideas are piling up faster than we can write.

Scott W: I have a notebook full of little scenarios. You get ideas all the time because you just need two great characters. Throw them in a situation together and see what happens. We get inspired just walking down the street in the South End.