The official book launch for August Lane is done. The book became an instant USA Today bestseller, something I didn't expect. I'll write separately about that particular journey (including why I gave up on anyone knowing this book existed multiple times). The short version is that the release was stressful, exciting, and incredibly rewarding. So many people reached out to tell me how much they loved the book, and there is nothing better than connecting with readers and learning about their experiences with your work.
One question I got repeatedly while on tour was whether writing a romance about a man who stole his only hit from the woman he ultimately ends up with made me nervous. Was I worried people wouldn't accept Luke as a hero or buy into his redemption? My answer was yes, of course. I want people to love my characters as much as I do, and all writers feel that way. Nerves are normal. But it never occurred to me to write something different. I felt the same way about The Art of Scandal. People asked whether I was nervous about writing a romance between a woman who was technically still married and a younger man. Again, the answer is yes and no. Yes, I want the story I'm telling to resonate with readers. But no, I was never tempted to change the plot.
This is on my mind because I'm currently working on a few different stories with characters that won't be for everyone. And that's okay. In my last newsletter, I discussed how not everything interests everyone, and that trying to write in a way that appeals to everyone will likely result in something that doesn't resonate deeply with anyone.
I'll never write to offend as few people as possible. That feels dishonest, and honestly, boring. My favorite books are the ones where I can tell the author wrote with their heart and gut, not their head. These days, most of our head voices are echoes of things we've read online anyway.
Listening to my heart and gut has never steered me wrong when it comes to writing. Someone called me brave once, and I don't know if that's what I would call my process. It's more about pushing back against the desire to protect the characters you've grown attached to. It's the need to write something that hooks into people in a way that isn't smooth or easy, but feels earned. If someone asks why my book exists (that "so what?" question you see in craft books), I want to give an honest answer that isn't some version of "I thought people would like this" because the truth is, I don't write books for everyone. I write for people who enjoy the types of stories I tell and the way I tell them.
One thing I think about often is who gets to be the main character in a romance. The people we center in stories with guaranteed happy endings are a reflection of who we are as a society. Reading books about flawed Black and brown people finding love, joy, and community against seemingly impossible odds is something we could all use right now. And I don't believe in putting limits on that joy. I don't believe in reserving the genre of my heart only for characters who got everything right except their love life. One of the most compassionate things we can do as writers is to give a respectful, honest story to someone who doesn't typically get them.
That said, my characters truly hate to see me coming. I don't write plots that are kind to them. They work for that ending in a way that makes you believe that the character growth will stick. One of my favorite lines in August Lane is when Luke says that songwriting lessons with August ruined him in ways that saved his life. That's a perfect way to sum up what I do to all my characters. Below are a few strategies I use to do precisely that when developing a new story.
I Make Falling in Love the Obstacle
The protective instinct: Give my characters external problems they can solve together.
What I do instead: Make wanting someone the thing that threatens everything my character has worked for.
When I was plotting The Art of Scandal, my first impulse was to create obstacles Rachel and Nathan could tackle as a team. But making Nathan the one person Rachel absolutely couldn't afford to want—a younger artist whose very existence threatened her carefully constructed public image—meant every interaction carried weight.
I've learned that when love is the problem, the romance plot tends to write itself. And the characters choosing each other feels like it has so much more weight.
I Don't Let My Characters Get Comfortable
The protective instinct: Establish a dynamic and let my characters settle into it.
What I do instead: Force them to evolve by changing the rules of their relationship.
With August Lane, I wanted to write a second-chance romance, but I worried about the relationship feeling static. So I made myself pivot their dynamic multiple times throughout the book. August and Luke started as friends in the past, which slowly grew into more (friends to lovers). In the present, they're enemies with history (enemies to lovers) that transitions into a second chance romance once the animosity starts to fade. Each shift feels like a small revelation as I'm writing. I get excited about what the characters will do next because I'm not letting them get comfortable in whatever dynamic I've established.
I Give My Characters the Wrong Temperament for Their Story
The protective instinct: Create characters who are naturally equipped to handle their circumstances.
What I do instead: Figure out what personality would thrive in my story world, then give my protagonist the opposite traits.
Rachel in The Art of Scandal should be a poised, elegant politician's wife, but I made her a sensual, reckless artist with self-destructive tendencies. Nathan should be a confident, sexy, tattooed artist with the assurance of someone raised with money. Instead, he's the insecure youngest child dealing with mild depression over his failure to launch.
This mismatch creates natural friction that's easy to write a story around. The characters are constantly bumping up against their circumstances in ways that generate both conflict and growth.
I Stop Trying to Make My Characters Perfect
The protective instinct: Explain away my characters' flaws so readers will love them.
What I do instead: Use their flaws to make them feel real.
I do want readers to connect with my characters, which tempts me to create elaborate justifications for their mistakes. In early drafts of August Lane, Luke's lie was more of a misunderstanding. But piling on explanations for why a character isn't really selfish or why their questionable choice was actually noble feels like I'm trying to control how readers respond to them, which is impossible.
Luke lied because he wanted to succeed. That's probably the most human thing about him, and I think it's one of the reasons he works as a character for me. It allowed me to dig deep into what it must feel like for a man who's good to his core to know that his biggest success is based on his biggest regret. If I had taken the safe route, I don't think that character would have spoken to me the way he did.
My biggest fear as a writer isn't that people will hate my characters and write a negative review. It's that they’ll forget about them as soon as the book is over. Evoking any emotion in another person is risky, but that risk is what makes a story worth telling. When we shield our characters from tough decisions, we shield readers from the messy, complicated emotions that make romance transformative. I'd rather write something that makes someone sad or angry than something that makes them feel nothing at all.
Words Worth Keeping
"I have since come to understand that there is no such thing as someone 'loving you enough' to be better. People can only be as good as they are, no matter how much they love you."
From Inside Out by Demi Moore
What protective instincts do you find yourself fighting in your own creative work? And readers: when you think about the romance novels that have stayed with you, were they the comfortable ones or the ones that challenged you in some way?
"I don't believe in reserving the genre of my heart only for characters who got everything right except their love life. One of the most compassionate things we can do as writers is to give a respectful, honest story to someone who doesn't typically get them."
THIS. I read those two sentences at least five times. Such insightful advice.
Okay but writers/readers LOVE to see you coming because everything about this was so insightful; I level up every single time I read you talking about writing. And this is also why I never forget your characters!