PORTLAND, Maine — Having grown up in South Portland, Steven Rowley understands the rhythms of tourist season. The joke goes that in July and August, when out-of-state visitors pour into Maine, traffic is so heavy that you can’t make a left turn on Route 1. As Mainers know, that’s not really a joke.
Rowley, a bestselling writer and author of the new novel "The Guncle Abroad," now lives in Palm Springs, California, where the high temperature Wednesday is forecast to hit 108 degrees. It’s the first week of June, so the really intense heat won’t arrive for weeks.
In Maine, summer is the peak of tourist season, but in Palm Springs it’s the opposite, a reality that took some getting used for Rowley.
"Some of the restaurants and businesses say, 'Closed for the season' in August," Rowley told us. "As a Mainer, I have to laugh because August IS the season."
For the past three weeks, Rowley has been traveling around the U.S. to promote "The Guncle Abroad," a sequel to "The Guncle." What’s a guncle, you ask? It’s a gay uncle, which Rowley happens to be in real life.
In the book’s acknowledgments, he notes that "there are cowardly politicians hell-bent on taking hard-fought and -won rights from minority communities while banning our stories in an attempt to deny our basic humanity." That, he writes, cannot be allowed to happen.
"Every hateful comment I receive about 'The Guncle' is validation I’m doing something right," Rowley said.