House of Biscotti
By Casey M. Boswell
The Story Behind House of Biscotti
After completing my stage musical Witness To A Journey, I found myself drawn back to one character in particular: Jules Davis, better known as Francesca de Biscotti.
In the musical, Jules arrives as a fully realized character. We know he came from Biloxi, Mississippi, traveled through New York City, and eventually settled in San Francisco during the late 1960s. But I realized I knew very little about the experiences that shaped him into the person audiences meet on stage.
As I began asking questions about his past—why he left home, what he found in New York, and how he became Francesca de Biscotti—I discovered there was an entire story waiting to be told.
That story became House of Biscotti.
House of Biscotti follows the journey of Jules Davis, a young gay man from Biloxi, Mississippi, who leaves home in search of a life where he can be himself. Drawn first to New York City and later to San Francisco, Jules navigates love, loss, friendship, and self-discovery during a time when LGBTQ people were often forced to live in the shadows.
Along the way, he creates the glamorous drag persona Francesca de Biscotti, a character who embodies the confidence and freedom Jules struggles to find in his everyday life. Set against the backdrop of the social and cultural changes of the late 1960s, House of Biscotti is a story of chosen family, resilience, and the courage to embrace one's authentic self.
The novel serves as a prequel to Witness To A Journey, exploring the formative years of Jules Davis and the events that shaped one of the musical's most memorable characters. In many ways, writing the novel was my opportunity to better understand a character who had already captured my imagination long before the curtain rose.
Our House Lounge
By Casey M. Boswell
The Story Behind Our House Lounge
I have been around drag performers for most of my adult life. My first long-term partner was an exceptionally talented drag queen, and for a time we lived in his adopted hometown of Hot Springs, Arkansas. There, a real bar called Our House Lounge—a converted auto repair shop—served as the heart of a vibrant drag community.
The performers who graced its stage inspired me more than they probably ever knew. Through them, I experienced Southern drag culture of the late 1980s and early 1990s, a time when many legendary entertainers passed through Hot Springs and nearby Little Rock. Their stories, humor, resilience, and sense of family left a lasting impression on me.
During my own years performing in drag, my stage name was Mona Bitlouder. When I began writing Our House Lounge, I gave that name to the novel's central character as a tribute to those years, those performers, and a community that helped shape my life.
While the story is fiction, its heart was inspired by real people, real places, and unforgettable memories from a remarkable chapter of LGBTQ history.
Set in Hot Springs, Arkansas, Our House Lounge follows Mona Bitlouder, a drag legend who has spent decades building a beloved drag venue and a chosen family around it. When a younger generation of performers embraces social media and livestreaming, Mona finds herself caught between preserving tradition and adapting to a rapidly changing world.
As old-school drag culture collides with modern technology, questions of loyalty, legacy, and survival threaten to divide the family she has built. Filled with humor, heart, and unforgettable characters, Our House Lounge is a celebration of drag culture, chosen family, and the challenge of passing a legacy to the next generation.
Voices From The Fog
By Casey M. Boswell
The Story Behind Voices From The Fog
Voices From The Fog was a personal challenge for me as a writer. Unlike my previous novels, which were rooted in drag culture, this was my first venture into suspense thriller fiction. I wanted to push myself creatively while still drawing upon the history and experiences that have shaped my life.
I also left a piece of my own story within its pages. The novel's Hotel Civic Center is inspired by the real Hotel Civic Center in San Francisco, where I lived as an SRO resident in the late 1990s after arriving in the city with little more than a thousand dollars and a dream of building a new life.
While the story is fiction, it grew from my fascination with history, memory, and the voices that can be lost with time. The result is a suspense thriller rooted in San Francisco's LGBTQ past, where the search for truth becomes as dangerous as the secrets themselves.
When archivist Daniel Mercer receives the estate of a long-forgotten drag activist known as Sister Angel Divine, he expects to catalog another collection of LGBTQ history. Instead, he uncovers a hidden cache of recordings and documents that point toward a decades-old secret buried within San Francisco's response to the AIDS epidemic.
As Daniel and a small group of allies follow the trail of evidence, they find themselves confronting powerful reputations, unresolved grief, and unanswered questions that have lingered for more than thirty years. What begins as an archival discovery quickly becomes a dangerous investigation, forcing them to decide how far they are willing to go in pursuit of the truth.
Part mystery, part historical thriller, Voices From The Fog is a story about memory, legacy, and the hidden voices that refuse to be forgotten.
COMING SOON - The Hotel Empress
By Casey M. Boswell
The Story Behind The Hotel Empress
With The Hotel Empress, I returned to a world I knew firsthand. In the late 1990s, after arriving in San Francisco with little money, no permanent housing, and no clear plan beyond building a better future, I spent a year living in an SRO hotel in the Civic Center neighborhood. The people I met there, and the lives unfolding behind hundreds of closed doors, left a lasting impression on me.
For this novel, I also returned to a storytelling style I first explored in my stage musical Witness To A Journey: moving through time. Rather than following a single protagonist, The Hotel Empress follows a single building across more than a century of San Francisco history. Each chapter opens a new door, introducing guests, residents, employees, dreamers, lovers, and survivors whose lives become woven into the hotel's story.
From its elegant beginnings as a destination hotel in the 1920s and 1930s, to its years as a discreet refuge for Hollywood celebrities seeking privacy, to its later transformation into long-term housing and an SRO residence, The Empress evolves alongside the city itself. Through wars, social change, economic upheaval, and shifting generations, the hotel quietly bears witness to the people who pass through its halls.
Rich with romance, heartbreak, humor, and resilience, The Hotel Empress is both a love letter to San Francisco and a reflection on memory, belonging, and the families we create along the way. While countless lives come and go throughout its pages, the true central character is the hotel itself—a silent observer preserving the stories of those who called it home, even if only for a single night.