My romance author career started as a joke between friends. I’ve dabbled in writing on and off over the course of my life, but I’ve never let anyone read anything I’ve written until my friends convinced me to do so last year.
A few years ago my friends and I, all employees of the same large corporation, decided we wanted to open a bookstore/cafe, with yoga, and other services tailored to our actual professions as a means to escape our day jobs. It was a mash up of lots of random things we thought would be more fun. But in order to indulge this fantasy we needed capital. One of my friends decided we would write and sell books.
At first, she was the only one of my friends who was into the idea of writing books with the goal of publishing. She writes paranormal women’s fiction, though, and she thought our best strategy was for someone to write spicy romance novels. She decided that person should be me.
Turns out, publishing is far more expensive than we imagined. We didn’t figure that out until we were far too into this process to care about that part anymore and now more in debt than closer to quitting our jobs to run a bookstore cafe yoga-studio.
I was reluctant to join her on her publishing journey—I couldn’t fathom people reading what I wrote—but I agreed to join her in doing NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) in November 2021 just for fun. I had wanted to be involved for years, but never had the time.
A month later I had a book, and my friends wanted to read it. It took them months to convince me to let them see the words I’d written, and, with some encouragement and a lot of editing, I published the novel I completed during that project in November 2022.
That novel was Uninvited. The story of Eleanor, the daughter of a politician. Her father has betrothed her to another child of politics, Mason. Eleanor has never questioned The Plan. She’s excellent at her job as a political strategist and good friends with Mason, her intended husband. Since she doesn’t believe in falling in love anyway, it’s not an issue for her despite the fact she didn’t choose him for herself. He is the logical choice and logic rules her existence.
With the wedding just a few months away, she feels rebellious. Her friend Connor has a band, and he asks her to help him with getting the word out by organizing street teams and handling social media. Excited to do something different, Eleanor agrees with the caveat that no-one knows her real identity, as that would jeopardize her fiance’s political campaign and her “real” career.
This is when Eleanor meets Silas—the sexy tour manager that would challenge everything she thought she knew about relationships and love while trying to balance her new double life. Her wedding is approaching like an out-of-control freight train, and she knows she can’t keep living two lives once she’s married.
Both men are trying to convince her they are the right choice. Life with Mason is the safe bet and the one she’s been planning for her whole life, but she can’t deny the pull she feels toward Silas.
When I wrote Uninvited, I did not know it would cause me to live my own version of a double life. I’m trying to live my best romance author life while working in the corporate world. I relate more to Eleanor now than I did when I wrote her story, and it’s been a wild ride.
If my life was a novel, I would have the Happily Ever After of living out my life as a romance author, but alas, such dreams are not in the cards for me — at least not for now. So until they are, I write steamy romance stories on the weekends.
I’m giving away the first chapter of Uninvited. You can get it on my website. When you download the free chapter, you will get an email on March 19 with a link to get the ebook on Amazon for just 99 cents!