Mark Twain said: Write what you know. I'm a 75-year-old gay man, with gay friends in the same age range. So I wrote what I know.
My characters come from people I've encountered along the way. A piece from this person; a bit from that person; melded together to form the guys I love in this story.
After a lifetime years of watching men my age get edited out of other people's stories, I wrote one where we keep the endings.