So I’ve been watching more television and movies. I wanted to watch something really romantic (shocking, I know), and my sister recommended Do You Like Brahms? It’s about two introverted musicians finding each other through a shared love of music.

It was the perfect choice. My sister knows my taste better than anyone else. My kryptonite, the theme you will find in every single one of my romances, is someone being seen clearly for the first time, which‌ allows them to see themselves clearly. If you’ve read my books, you know what I mean. Rachel and Nathan. August and Luke. Mia and Joe (my current messy children) are two sides of the same coin: oldest children with a straight-A perfectionist streak who only break rules for each other.

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Then I started thinking about some of the romantic films I’ve fallen in love with over the years, and how they’re all different takes on this theme. So here’s my watchlist of underrated films that I think epitomize this specific take on what it feels like to fall in love.

The Lunchbox (2013) A housewife in Mumbai prepares her husband a special lunch to save her dying marriage. The lunchbox ends up with the wrong man. She adds a note to the next day’s delivery, and he writes her back. Their entire romance unfolds through letters exchanged in a metal box, and this stranger sees her more clearly than anyone else, without ever seeing her face.

Rye Lane (2023). This movie unfolds across a single afternoon in South London and follows two strangers who’ve both just survived bad breakups. They spend the day helping each other navigate their nightmare relationships and realize that they see each other more clearly than their exes ever did.

Past Lives (2023) is about Nora and Hae Sung, childhood friends who are separated when Nora’s family emigrates from South Korea. They reconnect twice across decades, and the very specific tension that occurs when they’re in a room together is why I love writing and reading romances between people with history.

Beyond the Lights (2014) is a movie I will never stop recommending. Singer Noni is a popstar who’s falling apart under a constant spotlight. She tries to end her life, but is saved by a man who helps her remember who she really is. I used this movie as a comp when I started pitching The Art of Scandal because the vibes were so similar.

Black Bag (2025) is about an intelligence officer forced to investigate his wife, also an intelligence officer, for suspected treason. I watched this one recently, and I’m not sure I’ve seen anything more romantic than the way these deadly badasses love each other.

There are more I could list, but these are the first that came to mind as “I see you” movies. There are so many ways to interpret that (I see you because we’re the same, I see you because I’m paying attention, I see you because I want to be seen too), but I think it taps into this universal desire we all have to be affirmed and understood by the people we care about.

And that’s incredibly romantic.

Words worth keeping

“Sometimes, the wrong train takes us to the right station.”

From The Lunchbox

Give me your movie recs! Preferably, some underrated gem that’ll make me cry.

AUGUST LANE is out in paperback today. It’s a second-chance romance set in the Arkansas Delta, about Black country music, stolen credit, and two people with thirteen years of yearning and heartache between them. This time, they’ll finally get things right.

Grab your copy wherever books are sold. If you already have one, buy a copy for a friend, someone who thinks men don’t yearn in romance books anymore. Let Luke Randall prove them wrong.

Also, if you’re in the Nashville area this weekend, come out and celebrate with me at Slow Burn Books in conversation with the legendary, NYT bestselling author, singer-songwriter, Alice Randall. RSVP here.

I honestly thought we would all be on the right side of history when the news dropped about Megan Thee Stallion and Klay Thompson. She cooked for him, bought a house with him, and wrote songs about their love. He allegedly got “cold feet,” which he warmed by cheating. Now she’s being accused of manifesting her old heartbreak by acting like a wife without the ring. (I’ve been married for 12 years. Everything on that list is girlfriend-level. Maybe newlywed at best.) I was suprised but not suprised how quickly people reached for blame instead of compassion.

This got me thinking about likable and unlikeable characters in romance. It’s one of those topics that makes authors want to flip the table. Readers and writers are constantly dissecting why women protagonists are held to a higher standard than their male counterparts. When a man growls instead of using big adult words to voice his feelings is because he’s flawed. Those grunts are doing character work. If a woman is stubborn or runs away from her problems instead of facing them, it’s a DNF.

I never set out to write characters that everyone would like. Primarily because I don’t believe it’s possible. One of the most important things to me when creating a character is that they’re interesting enough to be the subject of an entire novel. I recently read Spread Me by Sarah Gailey and loved it. But the whole thing is told from the point of view of a main character I didn’t care for. I never rooted for her happy ending. And yet I was still entertained because this character’s particular kink, being attracted to viruses, made her an interesting protagonist to follow.

But some genres require people to like your character. Romance is the clearest example of this. There’s a mandatory happy ending, which means rootability matters. Your reader has to care whether this person gets there. They don’t have to want to be her best friend. But they do need enough ‌compassion to want better for her than the flawed regular world/status quo they’re experiencing at the beginning of the story.

Most readers, if you ask whether they need to like a character to enjoy a book, will answer no. But when you press them on what makes them feel disconnected from a story, the answer is rarely, “I just didn’t like her.”

I asked this on Threads a while back. ⬇️

The responses were fairly consistent. You can look through them here.

When readers say they “couldn’t connect” with a character, they usually mean their choices didn’t make sense, or her motivations were unclear. More simply stated, they didn’t understand her. That can be a craft problem. If those things are left off the page or unfold inconsistently, there’s a loss of trust in the author that erodes the reading experience. But a lack of connection can happen for the opposite reason, too. Sometimes you understand the character too well. She reminds you of yourself, and suddenly you’re not a reader watching someone else’s story. You’re standing in front of a mirror. When she makes the bad choice that you would never make (or maybe a bad choice you did make and now regret), you may not feel compassion. You get defensive.

I think that’s why some of us are looking at Megan right now and pointing to all the ways she could have avoided being hurt, particularly in such a public way. When we encounter a character who feels messy, making choices we recognize and maybe fear, it can trigger that same fear in us. This character isn’t being safe. She isn’t moving the way we do to make sure we’re okay. And that fear can manifest as anger or disgust. It manifests as “this character is stupid,” or “this is bad writing.”

I think of characters as mirrors or windows. A character who reflects your own hopes, dreams, and fears back at you becomes a mirror. We often get defensive in front of mirrors. A character who differs from you creates distance. Distance creates objectivity. Objectivity can make it easier to empathize in ways that evoke compassion.

So if likeability is a myth, then what exactly are writers supposed to do?

Nothing. Write a character who entertains and interests you. That’s what makes writing fun.

Yes, FUN.

If you’re a writer who insists on delivering on the genre’s promise and making your characters charming to most people, there are traits that increase the likelihood of that happening. Wit. Wisdom. Intelligence. Kindness. Competence. Passion. Physical attractiveness (which should be at the bottom of your priority list. I don’t care how many times you tell me how hot this man is. These are books. I cannot see him.)

Give your character at least two of these traits. Readers don’t love an asshole, but they love a funny asshole. Or they love an asshole wise enough to deliver a ruthlessly honest take on a situation everyone else is avoiding.

Don’t give her all those traits, though. A character who’s too perfect doesn’t feel human. The reader may not dislike her, but she might not care about her either. Perfect characters feel like placeholders for real people rather than humans dealing with realistic conflict.

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The one non-negotiable for a rootable character is bravery. It doesn’t have to be consistent. It’s fine for your flawed character to mess up and do or say the wrong thing. But periodically, when your character is facing a choice between an easy lie and a hard truth, make her choose the truth. Preferably, in the scene that introduces her. I think this is a more effective approach to getting the reader on your character’s side than a stock “save the cat” or “pet the dog” moment (not that there’s anything wrong with either of those things). We associate bravery with heroism. So even when they make mistakes or grunt instead of speaking, some evidence of courage will make us assume they’re worthy of our compassion. It’s easier to root for them to get that happy ending.

I actually revise for this during my second draft. An example of a courageous moment I added when we meet a character is Rachel in the first pages of The Art of Scandal. This is right after she receives an explicit text message that her husband meant to send to his mistress. Instead of bursting into tears or shouting at him, she does the following:

Rachel flipped her phone back over. The screen was covered in webbed cracks, but the picture was still visible. She sent a reply.

I don’t think you meant to send this to me.

[...] The kitchen door swung open and banged against the opposite wall. Matt rushed inside, his panicked eyes darting from her face to her abandoned phone. “Jesus.” He shoved both hands in his hair. “God, I’m so sorry.”

Rachel held his gaze and slowly pushed the cake over the counter’s edge. It fell face down into a blood-red pile at his feet.

It would be easy to pick apart all the ways Rachel brought this moment on herself. But this small show of bravery is when I fell in love with her as a character. Based on the messages I’ve received, the same thing happened for quite a few readers, too.

Reading is subjective. There are so many factors that affect whether we enjoy a story and how close we feel to a character. So maybe likeability isn’t the best way to discuss how we react to them. Maybe it’s more about understanding them. Rooting for them. Knowing why this person is at the center of the story. And it’s fine for us to disagree about who’s worthy of all those things.

Except when it’s Megan.

Words Worth Keeping

It does not matter whether your intent is to portray someone real or someone heroic. To make either type matter to your readers, you need only find in your real human being what is strong, and in your strong human being what is real.

The Fire in Fiction by Donald Maass

Short news section!

• The paperback for August Lane comes out next Tuesday! If you haven’t preordered your copy (with that gorgeous new updated cover), snag one now!

• There’s also a Goodreads Giveaway for paperback copies running right now. Enter here!

• I have a few events coming up! Hope to see some of you soon:

  • Friday, May 8th, August Lane Paperback Launch, in conversation with NYT Bestselling author, singer, and songwriter Alice Randall @ Slowburn Books, Nashville, TN; RSVP Here.

  • Saturday, May 30 - Sunday, May 31 Black Romance Book Fest, Atlanta, GA (SOLD OUT)

  • Saturday, June 11 - Sunday, June 12, Columbus Book Festival, Columbus, OH, FREE EVENT!)

    ---

Question for you: Who’s the last fictional character you connected with? I’m talking in an I’d add this person to the group chat kind of way? Why do you think that was?

I’ve been sad about movies lately. In recent months, I’ve boycotted:

1. Reboots

2. Sequels that should have been made 40 years ago

3. Films with trailers that are all vibes and no plot.

4. Retellings that look like Y2K-era music videos

A little backstory. I grew up as a latchkey kid in the 90s. We couldn’t afford cable, so my dad mailed Betamax tapes of recorded movies and music videos that my sister and I would watch on repeat. That’s why I can still recite Labyrinth dialogue verbatim and perform every song on the Grease 2 soundtrack. My first job was at Blockbuster Video. I watched every new release as soon as it came out. I read Entertainment Weekly religiously. I built watchlists based on screenwriters and directors.

All that to say, I really love movies. But lately, it feels like we’re being force-fed a lot of empty aesthetics and tired IP. When I come across something with a hook, a three-act structure, and a character arc, it feels rare. It feels like Hollywood has become hostile to meeting our expectations.

I’ve talked a lot about romance being a beautiful genre, which is why it gets dismissed as formulaic. Beauty is symmetrical. It’s aesthetically pleasing. It rewards expectations. Critics resent that. Audiences don’t.

Don’t believe me? Look at your critics vs audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.

The problem is, you’re a beautiful movie. Your leads are gorgeous. Your setting is stunning. The gentle way you tackled grief was lovely. You gave me the beats I expected: a meet-cute that turned hostile, a midpoint that changed everything, a dark night of the soul that made me tear up, and an ending tied in a bow. I laughed. I rooted for the characters. You made me walk out of that theater feeling seen and comforted. You didn’t make me feel uncomfortable or subvert anything, and that’s so rare that I feel like we’ve forgotten how to appreciate it.

Thank you for centering a Black couple in the type of story I never saw growing up. Word on the street is that you’re carrying the fate of all future Black romantic comedies in Hollywood on your back. If folks don’t support you, we’ll be in a Black romance drought for another decade. Try not to worry. Eventually, Ryan Coogler will direct a Shondaland production, and all will be well. You did your only job: entertained us. If people criticize you for being a predictable romantic fantasy, stand tall, push your shoulders back, and say, “Thank you for noticing. That’s exactly what I’m here for.”

All my love,

Regina

I’m on a deadline, squarely in the “this book is terrible” part of the writing process. Picture a dark, lonely cave, lit only by the glow of a computer screen. That’s where I’ve been emotionally. When I’m drafting, my characters speak as if they’re narrating a film in my head. I’m working on multiple projects at once, and these fake people are competing for attention. Stepping back from being online helps clear some of that noise, which is part of why this newsletter (and my socials) went quiet.

The good news: I did do a Critical Heart thing in March. I taught a workshop at the Tucson Festival of Books (FANTASTIC EVENT), something I’ve wanted to do since I started writing about romance here.

The workshop was called “Writing Romance with a Critical Heart,” and it covered a lot of ground I’ve explored in this newsletter. How do you write a character someone roots for even when they’re making bad decisions? How do you earn an emotional payoff? How do you write honestly about the world in an escapist genre?

I started with sentimentality, which is becoming one of my favorite topics. If you missed it, I wrote about the difference between what Alice LaPlante calls “excess of feeling independent of meaningful context” and the kind of sentiment that works in romance here.

I also discussed the beauty versus difficult beauty framework I borrowed from Bernard Bosanquet

I used The Neighbor Favor by and Long Shot by Kennedy Ryan as examples of two romance books that operate in different modes.

My favorite slide was the Venn diagram below:

On the left: micro-utopias, love as reward, the reader finishes feeling safe and seen. On the right: systemic friction, love as a survival tool, the reader finishes feeling challenged and changed. In the middle, where they overlap: the HEA, the romance as the plot, the universal theme of love as the key to happiness. I saw so many lightbulbs go off in that room.

I also touched on what it means to write outside your own experience, a topic that should probably have its own workshop. The short version: write honestly about your own experience before you try to write outside it. I plan to expand on that in an upcoming newsletter.

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On the subject of August Lane: the paperback releases in May, and my final copies arrived last week!

It’s surreal to see that “National Bestseller” designation and the NY Times Notable Book seal. Preorders always matter, so if you’ve been waiting until the paperback was available to get a physical copy, grab one now!

Also, more fun August Lane news is coming soon. 👀

That’s my update! I’ll try to share more thoughts about romance and writing as notes while I’m in this drafting space. In the meantime, thank you for sticking around during the quiet months.

I was so mad when Monica challenged Quincy to a one-on-one game for his heart in Love and Basketball. At the time, I wanted her to stand up, dust this man off, and find someone she didn’t have to fight so hard for. I was also angry about the timing of her confession. Right before his wedding? Do you know how muchthose things cost?

Now, looking back on that scene, I realized that I was also scared for her. It’s so hard to watch someone be that vulnerable, gamble their heart on a game they can’t control, without knowing whether the man she’s risking it all for will choose her in the end.

The film is told primarily from Monica’s experience. Quincy’s character is more opaque. When he wins the game, and she turns to leave, we don’t know what he’ll do, and neither does she. His “double or nothing” wrecks us because that gap in our knowledge makes the moment feel dangerous. We were as emotionally exposed as Monica was.

Now imagine a version of that film where we’re inside Quincy’s head the whole time. We watch him get engaged to another woman, knowing he never stopped loving Monica. He agrees to the game, and we already know he secretly wants to lose. The “double or nothing” wouldn’t be a surprise. It would be his white flag, a final admission to himself of what we knew the whole time. It was always her.

Same story. Same characters. But the point of view changes how that final moment feels.

Romance discourse keeps circling around this question: single or dual point of view (POV)? But the conversation often stalls without examining how each approach affects your experience of the love story. And that’s actually where the topic gets really interesting.

Suspense. Tension. DRAMA.

I want to distinguish between two words that get used interchangeably in craft discussions: tension and suspense.

Tension is friction. It’s what we feel in the present moment of a scene, the unease generated by conflict, lies, past wounds, or an unspoken desire. Picture two characters sitting across from each other. Character A is hiding a huge secret that would break up Character B’s marriage. That’s tension. It’s the charge in the air.

Suspense is a lack of knowledge about what happens next. It pulls the reader forward because the story question remains unresolved, and they need the answer. Will Character B learn the truth before dessert? What will she do once she knows? Suspense poses a question and forces the reader to wait for the answer.

Single-POV and dual-POV don’t create more or less tension or suspense. It’s just located in different aspects of the story.

In Pride and Prejudice, we only know what Elizabeth knows. Darcy’s feelings are a revelation because we’ve been locked inside her head the entire time. The suspense lives in a question: How does he feel about her?

In a single POV romance, there’s a gap between what the protagonist perceives and what the reader suspects is happening in the love interest’s head. The smaller the gap, the less tension there is. We stick with one character, interpreting every glance, every silence, every loaded pause, trying to decode a love interest whose inner life remains hidden. The suspense centers on the relationship itself: does this person feel what I feel?

Single POV love triangles tend to work well because there’s an additional layer of suspense. Not only are the love interests’ feelings a mystery, but we’re in the head of a main character who isn’t sure which person they’ll choose.

Now consider Sleepless in Seattle. We watch Sam grieve his wife on one coast while Annie questions her engagement on the other. They don’t meet until the final scene. The audience spends the whole film knowing these two people belong together before they’ve exchanged a single word. That’s dramatic irony (when the audience knows something the characters don’t), and it shifts the story’s energy. The suspense isn’t gone; it’s just moved to a different story question. Instead of ‘Does he love me?’ we’re asking, ‘What happens when they finally meet?’ Will they get there before it’s too late?

In a dual POV romance, there’s a gap between what the reader knows about both characters and what those characters know about each other. The smaller the gap, the less tension there is. The reader is holding secrets. We know he’s falling for her before she does. We know she’s hiding something that would change everything. The tension lives in the dramatic irony of every scene, while the suspense shifts outward, to the consequences of the secrets, the external threats, and the question of whether these two people can survive what’s coming.

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Choosing a POV

People often say single POV creates a more intimate reading experience, and I understand the logic. We typically move through the world knowing only what we see, hear, and think. A single POV romance mirrors that reality. When the love interest’s feelings remain opaque, the uncertainty feels personal because it matches how we experience attraction in real life. This is also why some readers may relate more closely to the main character in a single POV romance. When a reader can map their own emotional patterns onto the protagonist, the same insecurities, the same way of reading a room, the story becomes a vehicle for experiencing a romance rather than observing one.

But there’s also a structural challenge in single POV. The writer must sustain a sense of disbelief, convincing the reader to set aside what they already know about how this romance ends and to accept the protagonist’s uncertainty. When it works, the payoff is enormous. When it doesn’t, the reader spends half the book shouting “stop being stupid” at an unrealistically oblivious protagonist.

When writing from both characters’ perspectives, you’re asking the reader to hold two incomplete truths simultaneously. Each character believes something about themselves and about the other person, and the reader can see exactly where those beliefs diverge. The pleasure isn’t in will-they-or-won’t-they. It’s in two characters, mistreading each other, while you see the full picture.

This is where the distinction between the protagonist and the main character becomes useful. They’re not always the same person. In August Lane, Luke is the main character; his lie about his only hit song and his return home are the story’s focus. But August is the protagonist. Her choices drive the plot: the decision to blackmail him, to work with him, to forgive him. Both have POVs that work together to present the full story. Without Luke’s perspective, the reader wouldn’t understand the weight of his secret. Without August’s, the story would have no engine.

Dual POV gives you the architecture to separate those functions. One character can carry the emotional stakes while the other carries the narrative momentum, and the reader gets to watch those two forces converge. The challenge is keeping the knowledge gap alive. If both characters know the same things at the same time and feel the same way about each other at the same pace, the reader has nothing to anticipate. The tension and suspense collapse.

Creating Suspense and Tension in Dual POV

Since I write dual POV, I thought I’d share a few strategies I use to create tension and suspense when you’re in both characters’ heads.

Make your characters unreliable narrators of their own experience. People misinterpret their own reactions. Make a character insist she’s angry when the reader can see she’s terrified. Write a character who describes his feelings for someone as respect, when every action suggests something more. The reader watches them fumble toward their own truth and wonders when they’ll finally see it.

Give each character a secret. This is one of the best pieces of craft advice I’ve encountered. This could be a secret they’re keeping from the love interest or something they refuse to admit to themselves. The gap between what a character knows and what they’ll acknowledge is where some of the most compelling tension in romance lives.

When miscommunication happens, make it feel earned. Good miscommunication is consistent with everything we know about the character and the information available to them. It should feel like a logical mistake, not a contrived one. If a character who has been abandoned by everyone she’s trusted misreads a moment of hesitation as rejection, that tracks. If a character ignores a clear declaration of love because the plot needs more pages, the reader notices.

Don’t synchronize the arcs. Let one character arrive at a realization about their feelings while the other is still in denial. If both characters figure out they’re in love at the same time, you lose the tension of watching one person embrace their feelings in ways that disorient the other character.

Add external conflict. Let the world press in on the relationship. When external stakes interact with the romantic tension, each POV can carry different aspects of that pressure. The relationship doesn’t have to do all the work alone. And those external questions (will the secret destroy them, will the war keep them apart, will the lie come out before she’s ready) create suspense.

Which is Better?

Neither. They create different kinds of friction and relocate suspense to different parts of a story when we already know the ending. In single POV, the reader experiences the character’s knowledge gap. In dual-POV, dramatic irony does the heavy lifting. Both can be executed in ways that keep us turning the pages. They’re just different ways of experiencing a love story.

I’m writing another dual POV second chance romance right now, between two people who hurt each other badly in the past. One of the best realizations I had while drafting is that neither character ever grieved the loss of the other. They buried it, moved on, built lives, and told themselves that part of their life was over. But grief doesn’t disappear because you refuse to look at it. And dual POV lets me show what refusing to face that loss has cost them. In The Art of Intimacy, Stacey D’Erasmo writes about a “perilous crossing into the space between,” and that’s what I’m building toward, the moment when they face that loss and close the distance between who they were and who they are now. You won’t know when that happens. You won’t know how. But when it does, I want you to feel the accumulated weight of that moment all at once.

That’s my favorite kind of tension and suspense.

Words Worth Keeping

“And then they lived happily ever after. This is not the part of the story that engages us. We want to know what they said, how they looked, what was exchanged between them, what it all meant, and how it went down. Who was lost, who was found, and why? Every time one character approaches another, makes that perilous crossing into the space between, the reader knows that what happens next will be critical, it will produce a change.”

From The Art of Intimacy: The Space Between by Stacey D’Erasmo

What’s your relationship with POV as a reader? Do you gravitate toward romances where you’re locked inside one character’s head, or do you prefer knowing what both people are thinking? Writers: how do you decide whose perspective to use, and when?

Yes, I know it’s horror. This will make sense, I promise.

Genre will always face an uphill battle for critical recognition. A romance novel will never win a major literary award because publishers don’t nominate them. And even if they did, the judges wouldn’t read them. And ever since the discourse started about Sinners vs One Battle After Another, I’ve been thinking about why that is. I’ve touched on this subject before in the following newsletters:

But here’s another take. Romance novels are beautiful. Critics view that as a flaw.

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I ran across this idea while reading Chloé Cooper Jones’s memoir, Easy Beauty (a phenomenal, gorgeously written book). Cooper Jones is a philosopher born with sacral agenesis, a condition that shapes how she moves through the world. The book follows her as she wrestles with what we mean when we call something beautiful. One of my favorite sequences is when she’s debating whether to see Beyoncé in concert. At one point, she describes catching herself in a familiar defense mechanism, convincing herself she was “above, in both taste and intelligence, the experience of a pop concert.” Anything with mass appeal must be, by definition, lacking.

If you read or write romance, you’ll recognize this line of thinking immediately. The slight pause. The recalibrated expression. Oh, those kinds of books.

Cooper Jones introduces a framework from philosopher Bernard Bosanquet that distinguishes between easy beauty and difficult beauty. Easy beauty is apparent and unchallenging, a simple tune, a rose, a youthful face. It’s straightforward pleasure. Difficult beauty demands time, patience, and the ability to sit with tension. It can provoke resentment when we’re unable to reconcile the complex elements we encounter with our expectations.

Art critics often dismiss pleasing work as superficial. If art makes you feel good, it’s not real art. It’s that pretty, mass-produced landscape hanging behind your couch. It’s a guilty pleasure. Real art creates tension, provokes disgust, and makes the viewer, reader, or listener uncomfortable. Beauty does the opposite.

The logic extends to books. Truth equals pain. Work that centers decay, taboo, and discomfort is real work. But a book that leaves the reader satisfied? Those are lies. That’s escapism.

The Shape of Romance

Romance is beautiful by design. That’s not a flaw. That’s the point.

Think about the typical romance reading experience. The meet-cute is followed by rising tension before everything falls apart. The reunion that makes it all worthwhile. Some readers even track percentages on their Kindle and get antsy if the couple hasn’t met by the 10% mark. This is the genre’s version of harmony and proportion; the classic Greek notion of beauty as symmetry. A handsome man meets a gorgeous woman within a predictable structure that eases the reader’s anxiety. The universal theme of romance is connection and belonging. Rather than interrogating or indicting the human condition, romance often comforts it. And for critics trained to value discomfort above all else, that feels like a failure of ambition.

But anyone who loves romance novels is aware that they’re far more complicated than this framework suggests. I’ve read some that made me deeply uncomfortable. I’ve read books that felt more honest than many literary fiction novels. Before I Let Go by Kennedy Ryan took an unflinching look at grief and mental health, while Seven Days in June by Tia Williams didn’t shy away from the realities of living with chronic pain or what it looks like when young people experience trauma. Both challenge the human condition in ways that should satisfy any critic looking for tension and honesty. Which is why I’ve started thinking about romance as existing in two modes: beauty and difficult beauty.

Romances that center beauty focus on the attainment of love. They lean into lush prose, and competence runs high. The pleasure comes from watching two people work together with mutual respect. You often find micro-utopias: small towns where love flourishes, unimpeded by systemic friction. The reader finishes feeling safe and seen.

Romances that center difficult beauty focus on the cost of love. Characters are grieving, failing, or morally compromised. Intimacy feels slightly dangerous (seeYou Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi). These books might address trauma or systemic realities, but they use the happy ending as a form of restorative justice. Joy triumphs over darkness. The reader may finish the book feeling emotional, challenged, and changed.

If you’re a writer wondering what type of romances you write or a reader trying to work through your reaction to a particular story, here’s a useful question: Is the romance a reward for the character’s struggle, or the tool they use to survive it? If it’s a reward, you’re likely in the realm of beauty. If it’s a tool, you’re likely in difficult beauty territory.

Yeah, What about Sinners?

Ryan Coogler’s film is gorgeous: visually, sonically, and emotionally. It’s also doing something far more complex than critics seem willing to acknowledge. The story centers Black people in the Jim Crow South, navigating violence and joy and artistry and faith. It lets them be full people, which means they can experience beauty even in the midst of horror. And while the ending is bittersweet, it is ultimately a triumphant good-over-evil denouement.

That’s difficult beauty. Critics keep reaching for words like “crowd-pleaser” and “entertaining,” as if a film that moves millions of people can’t also be doing serious work. This is what happens when beauty and marginalization intersect. Beauty, as a concept, isn’t neutral. It’s associated with a white, Western ideal. And for a story about a marginalized person to be considered serious art, critics frequently demand “realistic suffering” as the price of admission, and the value of a story about Black, queer, or disabled life lies only in struggle.

If a marginalized character is happy and thriving in a romance, it’s dismissed as unrealistic. Traumatized characters experiencing PTSD don’t need happy endings; they need medication and therapy. But here’s what gets lost in that framing: for a marginalized person, experiencing beauty, romance, and peace is a form of defiance. Joy in the face of systemic violence is survival, and that’s as complex a subject as any critic could want.

Both, And

I’m officially 50K words into another romance that I’m pretty sure falls into the difficult category of beauty. But thinking through this concept really made me realize how important both modes of romance are. We need books that offer comfort and sanctuary. We need books that force us to sit with our discomfort before delivering catharsis. The genre is big enough to hold all of this. What frustrates me is the belief that romance needs to justify its promised happy endings or dress them in literary clothing to be taken seriously. Tension isn’t the sum of the human condition. Pleasure has value. And joy is just as realistic as pain.

Words Worth Keeping

“I never much cared for the early Greek concept of measurable beauty, nor did I agree that it was a virtue on par with truth or justice. I’d always preferred Hume’s notion that beauty was not a set of external properties, but rather that it existed in the contemplative mind. ‘Each mind perceives a different beauty,’ Hume argues. ‘One may even perceive deformity where another is sensible to beauty.’ And this is a better theory for me, a woman with a body that could never be mistaken for symmetrical or orderly.”

From Easy Beauty by Chloé Cooper Jones

Do you gravitate toward romances that offer sanctuary or ones that challenge you? Does it depend on what you need at the moment? I’d love to hear which books come to mind when you think about beauty versus difficult beauty.

Thinking through the things I enjoyed this year, a common thread emerged: they either evoke intense emotion in me or make me think about art or the world differently. It’s probably a response to being bombarded with content from all directions. It’s tough to know where to focus our attention, where to find things that will resonate with us, and how best to share them with people when everyone’s wrapped up in their own resonant books, films, and media. So I narrowed everything down to the top few that I recommend if I had your undivided attention (which, honestly, is one of the most valuable things you can give someone these days).

Favorite Reads

Fiction

The Princess and the PI by Nikki Payne
If you’ve paid attention to the latest discourse about romance books, you may have seen a lot of people searching for strong writing, good character development, and the yearning you’ll find in a Jane Austen novel. This year, Nikki gave me all of that, plus a murder mystery that had me on the edge of my seat.

The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow
I haven’t finished this one yet, and I don’t care. It’s going on the list. I’m slowly reading a physical hardback of this one and relishing every word because that’s what it deserves. It’s structurally complex with deeply drawn characters, and a sexy, intense love story that I’m pretty sure is going to break my heart. Ask me if I care.

Make Me Famous by Maud Ventura
This is one of those books that I recommend to people who enjoy thrillers and love being in the head of a completely unhinged, unself-aware character careening toward disaster. One of the best meditations on what it’s like to be super famous I’ve ever read.

Indigo by Beverly Jenkins
I shouldn’t even admit that I read this for the first time this year. I’ve read Beverly Jenkins before, but for some reason, I hadn’t read one of her most popular books. After reading it, I understand why it’s so beloved. There is something so special about this love story. It’s sexy and romantic, but also brimming with Black history that I encountered for the first time. This book is a classic for a reason, and if you’ve just started your historical romance journey, I strongly recommend picking it up.

The Reformatory by Tananarive Due
This is another book that’s been on my TBR for a while. I honestly avoided it because of the length. I tend to avoid longer books because I’m not the fastest reader these days. But I’m glad I prioritized this one, because it was such a powerful, beautifully written ghost story that took me through every emotion.. I’ve always said that horror and romance are sister genres because they both lean heavily on the reader’s sensory experience, and this one proved my point. It’s not an easy read, but stories about this country’s history of racialized violence rarely are.

Words Worth Keeping

To apologize, I wrote him a fawning text that ended with some French endearments. But autocorrect changed my message: Instead of sending “Je t’aime,” “I love you,” I accidentally sent “Je t’abîme”—”I’m damaging you.”

From Make Me Famous by Maud Ventura

Nonfiction

The Waterbearers: A Memoir of Mothers and Daughters by Sasha Bonét
Motherhood is a theme I write about a lot, so it wasn’t a surprise that I loved this debut memoir. What surprised me was how utterly beautiful it was and how much I learned about Black history through the lens of famous and infamous mothers. If I had to vote for the most underrated debut, this is it.

Black in Blues: How A Color Tells the Story of My People by Imani Perry
If Imani Perry writes it, I’m going to read it. This book was such a thoughtful, gorgeous meditation on the role of the color blue in Black history. Her books always teach me things about the South that I didn’t know and help me see the region I call home in new ways.

The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource by Chris Hayes
If I had to pick a book that had the most significant impact on how I move in the world this year, it would be this one. Chris Hayes talks about the commodification of our attention and how valuable it’s become. It put so many things in perspective for me, like how I engage with online platforms, what I pay attention to, and why. If you’re struggling with the pressure to be online, but find yourself growing frustrated by the fickleness of those spaces, this book might help put things in perspective.

Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wynn-Williams
You will never look at a Meta platform the same way. Everyone needs to read this book.

Words Worth Keeping

When they said she was ahead of her time, what they really mean is that everything they loved about her was everything they hated. That she had to teach them how to love her. Like moths attracted to the light so that they throw themselves up against it, only to find that they’ve been eclipsed by the very object of their desire. Only to then recount the encounter as a confrontation. Perhaps in some way that is exactly what it was. However, the confrontation was with ourselves; she simply led us to the path. When a mother is at her best, she gently guides us deeper toward ourselves. Not with force but with tenderness. And when a mother loves herself, we learn to love us too.

From The Waterbearers: A Memoir of Mothers and Daughters by Sasha Bonét

Favorite Romance Subgenre

Historical Romance

At some point, I’ll write an entire newsletter about how much I love historical romance, that it’s where I found my voice in the genre, and how I think of my books as contemporary romance with historical romance bones. But for now, here are a few I read and loved this year.

Words Worth Keeping

“I don’t know where you’re from originally, Galen, but on the Road here, we women don’t always have the luxury of worrying about our reputations when there’s work to be done.”

From Indigo by Beverly Jenkins

Favorite Writing Tools

Apple Notes

I took a deep dive into my notes app’s functionality, and it became my favorite place to record thoughts on the fly this year. I used smart folders to auto-sort them into files, scanned physical text right into the note with my camera, and (my favorite feature) recorded notes for my books and newsletters right into the app and copied the transcription into my rough drafts. The video below walks through some of the features I use.

Pacemaker Planner: A Word Count Planner for Writers and Students

I hate drafting. I’m a perfectionist, and a first draft is the opposite of perfection. It’s the worst version of my book, and I hate to see it. But I know it’s necessary because you cannot revise a book that isn’t written (I would be thrilled if you could). This time, I’ve used this planner to develop minimum daily word count goals that will get me where I need to be by my deadline. And so far, it’s been working. I find myself pushing to get more words written when I’m short, and pushing to double my goal on some days because I get rewarded with a lower word count the next day (you can set it so it automatically adjusts this way). I’m pretty sure I’ve doubled the word count I would have had without it, so if you’re like me and first drafts feel like torture, this may help.

The Art of Perspective: Who Tells the Story by Christopher Castellani
I had an identity crisis earlier this year when I tried to write in first POV. This book helped dig me out of it.

Words Worth Keeping

Often, an unlikable character “fails” not because he lacks winning qualities, but because he’s not a good narrator. Unlikability, then, is the narrative strategy that misfires, if not from the start, then somewhere along the way. The truly unlikable narrator is in the book you put down, the one who doesn’t ignite or engage you.

From The Art of Perspective: Who Tells the Story by Christopher Castellani

Favorite Film

Sinners

Like I’d choose anything else. It’s sexy, scary, gorgeous, Black, and southern. I adored every moment.

Words Worth Keeping

“Blues wasn’t forced on us like that religion. Nah, son, we brought that with us from home. It’s magic what we do. It’s sacred... and big.”

Favorite Podcast

Making: Stories Without End: NPR
It’s no secret that I love daytime soaps almost as much as I love romance novels. If, like me, you were raised on Victor Newman and Drucilla Winters, you’ll love this podcast, which walks through the history of soaps in such a nuanced and thoughtful way that you’ll be inspired to do a deeper dive like I was.

Favorite Television Show

Surface
Is this the best show on television? No. Is it a prestige drama? What does that mean anymore? Did it scratch a very specific itch that I have for amnesia mysteries that are actually just metaphors for the way women are forced to hide their true selves to survive young adulthood, queerness, patriarchy, and life in general? Absolutely.

I will also watch Gugu Mbatha-Raw recite a grocery list.

Favorite Song

So Easy (To Fall in Love) by Olivia Dean
This song is romance personified. It’s a whole scene. It’s that moment when one character decides that they want this. That they’re brave enough to say it out loud. It’s sweetly, classically sexy, and I’ve had it on repeat while drafting my new book.

Favorite Critical Heart Newsletter

At the start of the year, I told myself I'd use my newsletter to write about topics that fascinated me, and I’ve had such a great time doing so. I’ve met so many smart readers and writers here, and I credit some of that to this particular newsletter. I was nervous about sharing these thoughts about romance books because it felt taboo in a lot of ways. Like I was breaking some unspoken rule that people who love the genre aren’t supposed to talk about this particular aspect of loving the genre. But I did, and you all liked it, and it made me a lot more willing to share my (many, many) thoughts.

Favorite Book Release

August Lane

Not many people know that I lost not one, but two amazing editors connected to August Lane before it was released. Going into my publication date, the book was very much an orphan, and I’d already started grieving it. I cried a lot. I’d poured my heart into the hardest thing I’d ever written, and I was convinced no one would read it. This feeling isn’t unique. Every writer has this moment. And people will tell you that this is part of it, that so many huge names went unnoticed before they hit it big. This is meant as comfort, but it isn’t. It should be, but it never is.

The wonderful, magical thing that happened with my book is that it was released in the era of Cowboy Carter. People started calling it the Cowboy Carter book. Then Sinners came out. And then people began line dancing with fans. And suddenly this book of my heart hitched a ride on a moment, and this is the definition of luck being preparation meets opportunity. The opportunity was a pop culture moment. The preparation was throwing everything I had into writing the book of my heart.

Goals for 2026

Write a book (or two, or three)

I announced my next book, The King of Scandal, a while ago. If you’ve been following me since The Art of Scandal, you won’t be surprised to learn that this book was conceived in 2023. But it’s absolutely a standalone, something a new reader could pick up without getting lost (or at least that’s the goal). That’s what I’m drafting right now, so my first goal is to finish a first draft that I’m excited to send to my editor.

I’m also working on a second project that’s been more challenging than anything else I’ve attempted before. It’s still in very early stages, but the people I’ve spoken to about the concept seem very excited, which makes me excited, and I hope it will make the publishing powers that be excited, and readers, etc.

My third potential project is super secret and in its baby stages. But the moment I wrote the single-line pitch, I got excited, and that’s always a good sign.

All of this to say, 2026 is going to be my year of storytelling, and I’m pretty excited about that.

Support my author friends.

I don’t have a book releasing next year, but a lot of my friends do, and I’m going to do my best to support them when I can. Living in Arkansas makes it challenging to show up for them in person, but being present doesn’t always mean face-to-face. Sometimes it’s shouting about a new release online. Sometimes it’s reading new pages they’re nervous about. Sometimes it’s being a safe place for people to vent about how hard all this is.

Reading with intention.
Reading to learn.
Reading for joy.

I plan to do all of the above.

What were your favorites of the year? Any goals for 2026 you’d like to share?

Just writing that makes me happy. But lately, I’ve been seeing variations on the same theme in online book spaces: “Romance isn’t good anymore. Craft is dead. It’s all smut with no yearning.” Every time I scroll past one of these posts, something in my chest tightens. I love this genre in a hardcore, protective way that makes me fight anyone who tries to paint it with a single brush. But I don’t fight online (anymore, because I was in fandom once and ifykyk), and honestly, a lot of the criticism is justified. Bad romance books exist. Trends can make the more visible books of the genre feel reductive. And with book marketing being reduced to the amount of traction you can get on an algorithm, having a plethora of sexy snippets to quote for Reel on Instagram is a wise business decision.

However. HOWEVER.

Can I introduce another thought? An alternative theory for why so many readers are so frustrated with romance (contemporary romance in particular) these days?

Think about reading romance like eating at McDonald’s.

When you discover McDonald’s for the first time, it’s a revelation. People told you to avoid it. It’s junk food. Bad for you. Real foodies would never. But then you bite into that Big Mac and it tastes incredible. Delicious and fun for a low price. And they’re everywhere! Even in gas stations. Easily accessible. So you go back and order another. Then another. Rinse and repeat. Pretty soon, you’re eating Big Macs regularly because they taste exactly the way you expect. That’s the whole point of fast food chains. Consistency. You get the same eating experience every single time.

Reading romance works the same way. There’s comfort in knowing what you’re getting. A grumpy billionaire who softens for the right woman. A small-town bakery owner who falls for her competitor. Enemies who trade barbs until they end up in bed. These patterns feel comforting and safe, and also entertaining because even though we know only one bed is coming, we still love it every time. And then, the icing is the happy ending. The place where all that time you spent watching these two idiots bumble through their relationship becomes worth it. Finally, they get it right.

But what if you stumble across a Wendy’s?

You order a burger that resembles a Big Mac, but it has different toppings. The meat is square. You might think it’s interesting and file it away to try again later. Or you might feel disappointed because it’s not what you wanted. Neither reaction makes the burger bad. It just means it wasn’t what you expected.

The same thing happens with romance books. You may love contemporary romance with dual POV and a fast pace. Then you pick up a historical romance with deep introspection and slower pacing. Or a single POV romance that focuses more on the protagonist’s internal journey than the relationship itself. You might discover something you didn’t know you wanted. Or you might close the book and think, “This isn’t a romance,” or “This is badly written,” when it just wasn’t what you were craving.

Now imagine McDonald’s is the only place you eat. (I told you this metaphor had legs). Every meal, every day; McDonald’s. Eventually, you’re going to get bored with it. Or you’ll start noticing every minor flaw in every burger. The lettuce isn’t crisp enough. The sauce distribution is uneven. Things that never bothered you before suddenly feel intolerable.

The same thing happens when you read only one type of romance. You’ve read hundreds of books with essentially the same setup, and now you’re noticing things that never bothered you before. The meet-cute feels contrived. The third-act breakup seems forced. The grand gesture at the end doesn’t land the way it used to. You start thinking romance has gotten worse when really, you’ve just been eating the same meal too many times.

Are there poorly written romance books? Yes. But that’s not new. There have always been books that struggle with plot or character development. Every writer has weaknesses. I keep a running list of mine. But if every time you pick up a romance, you’re trying to recapture that feeling from when you first discovered the genre, that’s like visiting different McDonald’s locations hoping to relive that initial magic. Sometimes it’s not the book. Sometimes you’ve grown as a reader. Sometimes, you’ve been exposed to the same plot points and archetypes so many times that they don’t hit the way they used to. That’s usually a sign that you need to take a different approach.

Many people turned to romance during the pandemic, which probably shaped not just what they enjoy, but how they find books. Everything was online. BookTok exploded. I imagine that some readers still use social media as their primary discovery tool because they started using it during a time when we weren’t walking into bookstores and browsing. If that’s you, and your reading choices are based entirely on what the algorithm is showing you, below are a few alternative strategies that help me avoid burning out on my favorite genre and discover new books and authors:

Word of mouth from people who know my taste. Not books they enjoyed. Books they think I would like. There’s a difference. If you have a friend who pays attention to what you love and thinks of you when they come across that thing, ask them for recommendations. knows I love bonkers 90s romance plots, so we buddy read an old Harlequin Presents. knows I love historical romance, and she encouraged me to read Flowers from the Storm by Laura Kinsale, which is now one of my all-time favorite books.

Newsletter subscriptions. I love newsletters because the content isn’t shaped by my algorithm. I see what everyone else sees, which is becoming rare these days. Book Riot and NPR have good ones. has an amazing Substack that regularly posts a wide range of diverse romance reads.

Make an id list. I write down tropes, characters, settings, whatever gets me excited when I encounter it in a book. Then use those as search terms when looking for books online or at the library. (Ex. Angst + Amnesia = My top tier reading experience.)

Scan your reading history. If you track what you read, look at everything from the past year, and identify what’s missing. Maybe you didn’t read any nonfiction. Maybe there are no queer authors or translated titles. Make a goal to read more of those things next year and intentionally add them to your TBR. Once you’ve done that, try strategy number 5.

Mix up your genres. I have a hard time reading the same genre back-to-back because I don’t like comparing books too much. A large part of my reaction to a book is the context in which I read it. If I’m reading an author with a style I love, it’s harder to enjoy another author who writes in a tense or POV that isn’t my favorite, but I sometimes enjoy. If I read a fantastic romance, I’ll often switch to horror or thrillers to give the emotional effect time to wear off before I pick up another one.

Read older books. That Harlequin Presents I read made me realize why dual POV can be difficult to execute well in contemporary romance these days. We’ve done such a great job dismantling toxic masculinity in our books that we’ve created characters who both think and act like the book boyfriends they are. Back in the heyday of rich alpha-holes, it was necessary to be in that guy’s head because if you weren’t, he was just a jerk with no redeeming qualities. That’s the benefit of reading older books in a genre you love. You develop so much more context for the contemporary version, and you’re much more likely to gravitate toward books that will be satisfying. So if you love a ‘90s alpha-hole, contemporary might bore you, but a dark mafia romance with a tortured anti-hero might scratch the same itch.

Read diversely. For real. I think that sometimes people see this advice and feel like they’re being lectured. Read Black authors = Eat your broccoli. I absolutely do not want people to read The Art of Scandal or August Lane because they think they’ll learn something. If that happens, great, but they’re not textbooks. Approaching fiction with the goal of education might prevent you from connecting with a book the way the author intended: As a story. As entertainment. As something that prompts reflection on the world and your place in it. Reading diversely means picking up books by authors who see the world differently from you. It means reading about characters with motivations, backgrounds, traumas, and goals you haven’t encountered before or never considered. Doing so makes it more likely that you will pick up a romance or a mystery and won’t be able to figure out what happens next.

Slow down. Yearly reading goals are fun. Reading what everyone else is reading is fun. However, reading slowly, giving yourself time to think and reflect on a passage, and annotating it with different colors and symbols can also be fun. I pick up on so many more themes, subtle character work, and brilliant structural nuances when I take my time and sit with a book.

Words Worth Keeping

“When I talk about how to read now, I’m not just talking about how to read books now; I’m talking about how to read our world now. How to read films, TV shows, our history, each other. How to dismantle the forms of interpretation we’ve inherited; how those ways of interpreting are everywhere and unseen.”

From How to Read Now: Essays by Elaine Castillo

My next newsletter will feature a “Best of the Critical Heart” list, where I’ll share my favorite books, TV shows, films, podcasts, and more from the past year. But first, I want to hear from you: what was the most unexpected read you had this year? The one that surprised you, challenged you, or reminded you why you love reading romance in the first place? Also, do you think the romance genre is struggling right now? Cast your vote below!

How to Enter

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Instagram followers: You can also enter over on Instagram @reginablackwrites by following me, commenting with your favorite audiobook, and tagging a friend!

I’ll choose two winners on October 7th and reach out via DM.

Whether you win or not, I’m grateful you’re part of this community. And if you’ve already read AUGUST LANE, I’d love to hear what you thought! Just hit reply and tell me about your favorite scene, character, or moment. Your words mean the world to me.

Good luck, and thank you again for sharing this journey with me!

P.S. Even if you don’t win, the audiobook is available wherever you listen—Audible, Libro.FM, Apple Books, and more. Support your local bookstore by purchasing through Libro.fm!

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It opens by defining various writing terms, and there's a section on sentiment and sentimentality. I read this while watching The Gilded Age, which I enjoy but also think is guilty of employing two storytelling techniques LaPlante argues we should avoid: sentimentality and melodrama.

She defines melodrama as extravagant theatricality, evoking reader (or viewer) emotions through "the sensational nature of events and/or actions making up the plot, rather than through more subtle elements, such as characterization." Like a character we barely know being run over by a carriage, for example. Sentimentality in fiction is unearned emotion. "When a piece is imbued with sentiment independent of meaningful context." I think my carriage death example works here as well.

What both of these have in common is that they focus on our attempts to evoke emotions in readers. I don't know a single author who doesn't want that. As a reader, I love a romance novel that makes me laugh or cry. (Both in the same book is even better.) But as I started reading more about the perils of melodrama and sentimentality, I started to wonder whether, as romance authors, we have to do a different calculus in the way we approach our work.

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Should we avoid sentimental writing? I don't think so. John Truby argues in The Anatomy of Genres that the universal theme of all love stories is that love is the key to happiness. That's a highly sentimental statement. For many people, it's also true. But there's a difference between sentiment that moves you and sentiment that manipulates you. The key is figuring out where that line is.

Ah, tropes

I love tropes. I’m currently devouring Private Arrangements by Sherry Thomas, partially because it’s a marriage-in-trouble romance, which is one of my favorites. I'm still waiting for Nikki Payne to write me an amnesia romcom. But if we're not careful, they can also be sentimental shortcuts. What this might look like is stringing together a series of familiar situations: Enemies to lovers. A road trip. Only one bed at the inn. My brain makes assumptions about how the story will play out and how I might feel along the way. I'll laugh when they're enemies. Swoon when they start to fall for each other. Sweat when they have to share a bed.

Only, there's a good chance I won't. It may feel like the author is telling me to feel these things by placing these exact tropes at exactly the places in the story I would expect them. That usually has the opposite effect on me. Thinking "this is supposed to make me laugh," means I likely won’t. It became a head thing and not a gut thing (something I discuss more in the newsletter below)

Tropes alone can't do the emotional heavy lifting. That's sentimentality in its worst form. But what if they're rival tennis players on the same college team who both missed the bus to a tournament and can't afford plane tickets? And they share a bed because neither wants to risk injury or sleep deprivation before the match. Now we're getting somewhere, right? The tropes are signposts, but the specificity of the characters and their situation is doing the heavy lifting. That's what happens when we add context.

But what kind of context? Are there specific topics that are off limits? As readers, do we need to simplify the complexities of life and humanity to accept the happy ending? And is this genre convention, the guarantee that no matter what happens in the book, the couple will end up together, so inherently sentimental that it undermines any argument that these books have literary merit?

Romance has never been respected in literary circles even thought it’s extremely popular and profitable. I wouldn’t be surprised if many of the imprints acquiring it these days resent the pressure to add more of it to their lists. I picture an editor holding their nose at acquisition meetings as they present the latest romantasy that will hit the New York Times bestseller list. I have my theories about why this is, but one of them is that sentimentality, something writers are taught to avoid, is baked into the DNA of the genre. I'm sure it causes an existential crisis.

Think about the classic romance setup: A beautiful woman from a middle-class family catches the eye of a wealthy man who sweeps her off her feet.

This is standard romance fare. So many readers would devour this. But what if her family is abusive? What if he commits fraud and loses everything? What if she only dates him as an escape route, and he dates her to appear rehabilitated? What if they fall in love along the way? Would you believe their happy ending if her parents never changed, and he ended up working for one of his former employees?

Your answer is the key to drawing a line between sentimentality that undermines the genre and the sentiment that defines it.

Cinderella's shoes had blood in them

You know what lacks nuance? Fairy tales. We don't read them for realism. We read them because they're a safe space to explore dangerous things—death, abandonment, transformation, desire. The simplicity isn't a bug, it's a feature.

Romance often works the same way. Tropes and guaranteed happy endings are a framework. They let us explore intense emotions without existential dread. We know these characters will be okay, so we can afford to feel everything along the way. But what makes us believe a couple will last? For some readers, it's the absence of conflict. Every possible obstacle that could stand in the way of the characters staying together forever has been removed. The characters themselves must be the type of people who can thrive in this frictionless life.

That sounds like an emotional shortcut to me. The author assures me it's okay to walk away from this story without worrying about these two. Everything has been tied with a bow. But life doesn't work that way. And if we're not careful, a believable happy ending can look like the following: No disability. No queerness. No Blackness or brownness. No PTSD, no addiction recovery, no money troubles. Because those things create friction, and friction threatens the fantasy. This is how leaning too heavily into the sentimentality of a happy ending can undermine the genre.

My favorite romances are about people with real challenges falling in love anyway, not in spite of those challenges, but through them. Tanked by Mia Hopkins is a beautifully written erotic romance between two working-class Mexican American characters dealing with financial struggles and family drama during the pandemic. I finished that book knowing they'd stay married for decades, even though the problems they faced didn't magically disappear when the story was over.

So how do we write sentiment that feels authentic instead of manipulative? I’m still working through that. Here are some strategies I’ve used in the past.

How I (Try to) Write Emotion That Lands

I take it slow. If you open with tragedy on page one, readers may protect themselves by staying emotionally distant. It's not a conscious response; it's instinctual. I introduce my characters, establish their motivations, goals, and wounds, before placing them in an emotional situation. My hope is that it makes the intensity of that moment feel earned.

In August Lane, I spent two chapters establishing who August and Luke are, who they were, and hinted at what they meant ot each other before giving them an emotionally charged reunion. By the time they lock eyes, we understand exactly why something as simple as getting his coffee order wrong shakes August to her core.

I make myself uncomfortable. Whenever I consider a plot point and immediately dismiss it as "too much," I pause to ask why. Usually, it's because the idea makes me uncomfortable. Not because it's wrong for the story, but because it feels too honest.

During edits for The Art of Scandal, my editor left a note on the third act breakup scene that stung a little. (Okay, it stung a lot.) She said the scene felt flat. My first reaction was to argue. They were yelling! There was drama! Tears! But after reflecting a little, I realized she was right. I was pulling punches.

Here's an example of a line from the original draft:

She stood up, grabbed her purse, and made her way to the door. She turned back to meet his eyes, and the pain she saw there mirrored her own. Nathan blinked hard and looked away.

"You're better than this," he said. "You deserve so much more than what someone's willing to give you. And so do I."

It's fine. Sad-ish. Here's the revision:

Nathan opened the door and gestured for her to leave. She was tempted to stay and argue, to try and convince him he was wrong, and that even a flawed piece of what they had was worth saving.

But no one got to keep stolen moments. They were always going to end this way.

I didn't want to write that last line. Rachel never believed they'd end up together, but I didn't want to admit that because I was so attached to them as a couple. Once I got comfortable with being uncomfortable, I wrote a scene that worked.

I write the third emotion. I stole this from Donald Maass's The Emotional Craft of Fiction. In any emotional scene, there's the obvious emotion anyone would feel. A character who just lost a loved one, for example, would feel sad. That's the first thing you think of. Then you might think of a second emotion: anger. He's angry that this person's life was cut short. What about a third emotion? What if he felt relief? What if there was something in their relationship that was a weight he'd been carrying, and now that they're gone, he feels lighter? Consider the potential of a character who is grieving while suppressing joy.

When Luke gets offered a chance to save his career in August Lane, the obvious emotion is happiness. The second was disbelief, which did make its way into the scene. But then I thought, what if he's afraid? This is a man who's terrified of hoping for salvation. And that's what inspired the following section:

Luke didn't sit down right away, even though hope surged through him hard and fast. He couldn't do that. He couldn't hitch his dead dreams to Jojo's big moment because odds were this conversation wasn't what it looked like. Last week, he'd watched a newscast where the Tennessee lottery announcer read winning ticket numbers next to a cage of Ping-Pong balls. The first few matched Luke's birthday, and even though he hadn't bought a ticket, his heart skipped a few beats anyway. Now, it did that same pointless jig. Jojo's manager offering to work with him was a long shot in a game he'd stopped playing.

That unexpected emotion creates suspense at the line level. Readers lean in because they recognize something true, even if they've never articulated it. And writing at that third level is more likely to elicit a genuine response that the reader hasn't prepared themselves for. It's completely unexpected.

TL;DR

The Gilded Age was fascinating, but I didn't feel much while watching it. Meanwhile, KPop Demon Hunters made me cry multiple times. Not because of the demons or the dance numbers, but because the writers understood the emotional truth of lying about who you are to people you love. Watching the main character face that shame and heal felt real, even wrapped in complete fantasy.

(If you're interested in stories about singers forced to face the lie their career is based on while healing from shame and trauma, might I suggest a book called August Lane?)

Emotional truth is what resonates in escapist stories. Romance is inherently sentimental, and that's okay. If we can find literary value in myths and folklore, we can recognize romance for what it does: explore universal human experiences through a specific, effective framework.

But the genre is strong enough for friction. It has room for disabled characters, queer characters, characters dealing with trauma and addiction, and poverty—not as obstacles to overcome, but as part of who they are as they fall in love.

This might be why purely literary takes on romance often fail for genre readers. Literary fiction runs from sentiment like it's contagious. But sentiment isn't the problem. Unearned sentiment is. There's nothing unrealistic about two people finding authentic happiness together. It happens. What makes it work on the page is earning it.

Words Worth Keeping

"Creating a world that is emotionally involving for readers means raising questions and concerns about that world. It means both welcoming readers inside that world and making them curious, or uneasy, about where they are."

From The Emotional Craft of Fiction by Donald Maass

How do you want to feel when you read a romance? What does it take for you to believe the characters will stay together after the last page?

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.

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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?

Dear Reader,

When I started writing August Lane, I couldn't have predicted how the conversation about Black voices in country music would evolve. The initial idea came from a Ben Folds song called "Belinda" about a singer forced to perform a song about an ex he wronged. I couldn't get the thought out of my head: what happens when someone's biggest hit is based on their biggest regret? What if they were a Black country singer and it was his only hit?

Like the characters in the book, I grew up listening to "Islands in the Stream" and two-stepped to "Achy Breaky Heart" in my small Arkansas hometown. The fictional setting of Arcadia, Arkansas is a historically Black community where the summers are sweltering, the tea is sweet, and delta music flows from church pews to blues bars. It's a place where coming home means returning to who you are. That's what writing this book did for me. It brought me home.

There's a unique kind of loneliness in loving music that doesn't always seem to love you back. But things are changing. Cowboy Carter won a Grammy for Best Country Album and Album of the Year. Linda Martell, Shaboozey, and Tanner Adell have moved from the margins to the mainstream. Artists are reclaiming their rightful space in a genre with deep Black roots, and this story feels even more timely than I could have imagined when I started it.

But at its heart, August Lane is a love story. It’s about healing after making the type of mistakes that calcify into regret. It explores forgiveness in a way that isn't easy or obvious, but hard-won and transformative. It’s about two people whose broken pieces fit together in a way that makes them whole.

This story is for anyone who's ever felt out of place or been told their voice doesn't fit in the spaces they love. It’s also for anyone who believes in second chances, even when they seem impossible. I hope August and Luke's journey toward love, forgiveness, and finding their voices resonates with you. And if it makes you cry, I hope it also makes you laugh and gives you hope.

Kind of like your favorite love song.

Regina Black

Get Your Copy

August Lane is available everywhere books are sold.

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Celebrate With Me

I'm hitting the road to share this story, and I'd love to see you:

Tuesday, July 29, 2025 | August Lane Launch Event, Wordsworth Books, Little Rock, AR

Wednesday, July 30, 2025 | Joint Event with Alicia Thompson, Parnassus Books, Nashville, TN

Thursday, July 31, 2025 | In conversation with Terah Shelton-Harris, The Novel Neighbor, St. Louis, MO

Monday, August 4, 2025 | In conversation with Tati Richardson, Eagle Eye Book Shop, Decatur, GA

Tuesday, August 5, 2025 | In conversation with Nikki Payne, East City Bookshop, Washington, DC – Virtual

Wednesday, August 6, 2025 | In Conversation with Danielle Allen, Under the Cover KC, Kansas City, MO

Wednesday, August 13, 2025 | In Conversation with Kennedy Ryan, Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh, NC

Thursday, August 22, 2025 | Author Event, Two Friends Bookstore & Cafe, Bentonville, AR

The Soundtrack

Every love story needs a playlist. I've curated the songs that shaped August and Luke's world. Listen while reading or once you’re done, if it’s hard to let them go.

What’s your favorite country song? Drop it in the comments!

I have never considered myself a slow-burn romance author. So far, my couples have been attracted to each other from the beginning, and the first on-page intimacy happens at the 50% mark at the latest. However, we're increasingly approaching a point where the expectation is for on-page intimacy to occur much sooner.

In my debut The Art of Scandal, the main couple kisses for the first time a little before the midpoint. It never occurred to me to call that book a slow burn, but it has been labeled that a few times. I learned my lesson with August Lane and started calling it a slow burn from the beginning, even though, again, the characters have an immediate attraction. Reflecting on that decision led me to conduct a deeper examination of what a slow burn is and why the concept seems so nebulous these days.

This article by Nancy DeMarco in Book Riot defines a slow burn as "when the romantic attraction between characters builds slowly throughout a novel or series." However, the slow burn label is evolving. For some, it's a percentage marker—a way to communicate in shorthand when there's sex on the page or how quickly the couple becomes romantically interested in each other. I also think it's gradually crept into another aspect of reading and storytelling, one that focuses more on pacing and engagement than the level of emotional intimacy between the characters.

We’ve All Got Pacing Problems

Pacing is often blamed for a poor reading experience. Writers are obsessed with it. We all want to write a propulsive book. It's a skill we constantly strive to improve, but it can often feel too nebulous to grasp. How do you know whether your book is fast or slow-paced?

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The most common advice is to look at percentages, when and how quickly things are happening in your book. We often focus on scene length and chapter length. We start the action late and end it early, so the bulk of what's on the page is plot movement. Short, jumpy sentences are good. Lots of dialogue and white space. All of this is good advice, but my favorite pacing technique focuses more on function rather than form.

I use the scene/sequel structure to adjust my pacing. In narrative writing, scenes equal action and sequels equal character reactions and decisions. Scenes focus on a character's goal and conflict, while sequels explore the character's internalization, reflection, and decision-making. This structure creates a cause-and-effect chain that propels the story forward.

Donald Maass calls sequels "postcards" in his essay "What Makes Fiction Literary: Scenes Versus Postcards." He writes: "A scene enacts a change in story circumstances; a postcard illuminates something that we haven't yet fathomed or perceived. A scene leads to further action; a postcard leads to deeper understanding. A scene is about what happens; a postcard is about what we discover."

Here's the practical application: Track the number and placement of scenes versus sequels. The easiest way to change the pace of your work is to adjust the ratio. More scenes equal faster pacing. More sequels or postcards equal slower pacing.

So if you want a fast-paced book, just write a bunch of scenes and call it a day, right? Well, that depends. Some books need a slower pace to do the story justice. When I start writing a book, I always begin by deciding how I want the reader to feel. If I want a reader flipping the page quickly with their heart pounding because they're not sure what's going to happen next, that means more scenes, more things happening, a faster pace. But if I want a reader to feel the story in their chest, to carry it with them, to stop and reflect on what's happening and really become attached to my characters, then I have to give narrative space to the type of deep, reflective storytelling that causes that.

We're not actually interested in what happens to characters. We're interested in how they deal with what happens. It's not the scene we remember. It's the emotional impact on the character and on us.

It's the same thing with slow burn romance. I think the point of a slow burn is the suspense, the tension, the anticipation, and the build toward something explosive. But that takes time. It's impossible for the reader to reflect on what they've learned if a book is moving at breakneck speed with constant scenes delivering action after action after action. One of the things I strive to do in my stories is to give my characters time to react and reflect on what's happening.

The Power of Reflection

I recently read an MIT Technology Review article by Will Douglas Heaven on the nature of creativity. He said, "Ask a range of researchers studying creativity to name a key part of the creative process, and many will say: reflection. It's hard to define exactly, but reflection is a particular type of focused, deliberate thinking. It's what happens when a new idea hits you. Or when an assumption you had turns out to be wrong, and you need to rethink your approach. It's the opposite of a one-shot interaction."

This connection between reflection and creativity is particularly relevant to our experience of romance. When we pause in our reading—when we sink into those postcard moments—the story becomes something we carry with us rather than something that disappears the minute we step away. Reading and writing romance is a different experience when we allow space for reflection on what's happening. The emotions linger. The connections deepen. The story comes back to you instead of vanishing like a half-remembered dream.

There isn't an author out there who doesn't want people to read their books this way. We want you to pause and reflect on the story we're telling. As a reader, that's what I want too. I want to pick up books that teach me something about myself that I didn't know or make me think about the world in a way I never have before. I want to read a romance that pulls me in bit by bit and holds me suspended just long enough to feel like I can't stand it anymore before it drops me into the love affair that it's been building, brick by brick.

Is it slow, though?

I do think my burns are slowing down. Part of that's because the characters I'm writing about have become more complicated, the dynamics are messier, and the stakes are bigger. In The Art of Scandal, Rachel and Nathan's attraction was immediate, but their emotional barriers were relatively straightforward: trust, timing, and public perception. With August Lane, August and Luke carry decades of history, unresolved grief, and questions about artistic integrity that can't be solved with a single conversation or gesture. There's way too much work to do to get them to the point of intimacy on the page.

I'm okay with that. I hope my readers are patient enough to get there. But then there's the other possibility: what if the burn or the pacing isn't the problem? What if we're all just bored?

If you're a writer, I'm about to set you free a little. If you're a reader, I'm about to ease your guilt about not liking a thing that's objectively well-written. Everything is not interesting to everyone. Every character doesn't intrigue every reader in the same way. So if you're a writer doing backflips to speed up your pacing and get to the good stuff, for some readers, there will never be any good stuff. You're writing about something they don't care much about, which is okay. It may actually be a sign that you're doing something right.

Stories that stick with me as a reader feel specific. Instead of a character who feels like every other character in a romance novel, the main character feels unique in the way that real people are unique. They're a jumble of traits, flaws, quirks, and physicality that only belong to them. However, if your character is specific in a way I'm not interested in or curious about, you could make them sing arias and pirouette through an action scene, and the book will still drag for me.

If you're a reader, my advice is to put that book down and move on. Don't worry about being the odd person out, because chances are, there are tons of others who have had the same experience. If you're a writer worried that your stories aren't interesting to anyone, here's the solution: Make the story interesting to you. Be so invested in your story and characters that you can reread it a million times and still tear up during the third-act breakup because you love the characters that much.

I gravitate toward stories about people whose identities create friction with the world—race, religion, income level, etc. I also love deep dives into topics that seem mundane but reveal rich histories and subcultures. Books without these elements feel slow to me. This isn't a flaw in those books or in my taste. It's a reminder that pacing is subjective. What feels like watching paint dry to one reader flies by for another who connects deeply with the characters and conflicts.

The moments when we pause, when we sink into a scene instead of racing past it, often produce the most profound insights. For writers, this might mean trusting your instinct to linger with a character in a state of pain. For readers, it might mean accepting that some books require a different reading rhythm. In storytelling and life, the biggest impact often happens when we take the time to sit with what we've discovered.

Slow Burn Book Recommendations

Pride and Protest by Nikki Payne
Pride and Prejudice is the classic slow burn template, and Nikki Payne's debut retelling captures this energy perfectly. Set in Washington, DC, this modern adaptation follows Liza Bennett, a community activist, and Dorsey Fitzgerald, a developer whose plans threaten her neighborhood. The antagonistic attraction builds over protests, community meetings, and passionate debates about gentrification. Payne masterfully translates Austen's social commentary into contemporary issues while maintaining that exquisite tension of two people who can't stand each other but can't stay away.

Forbidden by Beverly Jenkins
This historical romance is a prime example of how significant obstacles between a couple necessitate a slower burn. Set in 1870s Nevada, it follows Rhine Fontaine, a Black man who passes for white, and Eddy Carmichael, a Black woman he rescues and falls in love with. Jenkins uses the racial tensions and gender expectations of the Old West to create natural barriers that make every stolen moment feel earned. The payoff is worth the wait because Jenkins understands that anticipation is an art form.

The Beautiful Ones and Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
One thing many people may not know about Silvia Moreno-Garcia is that she writes some of the most compelling romantic plots and subplots across various genres. The Beautiful Ones is a fantasy historical romance with a glacial burn that has one of the most satisfying payoffs I've experienced. It follows Nina, a telekinetic young woman navigating high society, and Hector, an aging entertainer who becomes her mentor. The friends-to-lovers progression spans decades of longing and near misses.

If you're into horror, Silver Nitrate has one of the best friends-to-lovers subplots in recent memory, following two horror film enthusiasts whose shared obsession with occult cinema slowly transforms into something deeper.

Abbott Elementary's Janine and Gregory
This is a recent example of the classic will-they-won't-they dynamic that network television perfected in the 80s and 90s. The mockumentary format allows us to see their attraction through glances, small gestures, and the kind of workplace intimacy that builds over time. It's also an excellent friends-to-lovers progression, which is an underrated slow burn trope that relies on emotional intimacy rather than physical tension.

Past Lives (2023 film)
If you like beautiful slow burns that span decades and have bittersweet endings, there's nothing better. This film follows Nora and Hae Sung, childhood sweethearts separated when Nora's family emigrates from South Korea. Twenty years later, they reconnect over video calls, and another decade passes before they meet in person. The film understands that some love stories are about timing, memory, and the paths not taken. It's a masterclass in restraint and the power of what's left unsaid.

I'm curious about your relationship with pacing, both as readers and writers. What's your definition of a slow burn? Do you prefer faster or slower narratives? How can you tell whether a book is slow or just not the right book for you at the time? Have you ever returned to a book you initially found "slow," only to discover it was exactly what you needed at a different moment in your life?

Every author has dreams, and a book tour like this is definitely one of mine. Kennedy Ryan in Raleigh? Terah Shelton-Harris in St. Louis? Danielle Allen in KC? I may be too star-struck to talk about my book! Plus, I get to launch in my hometown at Wordsworth Books, which feels like the perfect way to kick off the celebration.

Several of these events have limited seating and require advance tickets. Event links are all listed below, so reserve your spot now! Trust me, you want to be in the room when we start talking about art, love, and country soul 🤠

Tour Dates

Tuesday, July 29, 2025
August Lane Launch Event
6:30 p.m. CT @ Wordsworth Books, Little Rock, AR
[Event Link]

Wednesday, July 30, 2025
Joint Event with Alicia Thompson
6:30 p.m. CT @ Parnassus Books, Nashville, TN
[Event Link]

Thursday, July 31, 2025
In conversation with Terah Shelton-Harris
6:30 p.m. @ The Novel Neighbor, St. Louis, MO
[Event Link]

Saturday, August 2, 2025
Author Talk
4:00 p.m. @ Paper Hearts Bookstore, Little Rock, AR

Monday, August 4, 2025
In conversation with Naima Simone and Tati Richardson
7:00 p.m. ET @ Eagle Eye Book Shop, Decatur, GA
Ticketed Event - Limited Space, RSVP Now
[Event Link]

Tuesday, August 5, 2025
In conversation with Nikki Payne
7:30 p.m. ET/6:30 p.m. CT @ East City Bookshop, Washington, DC
Virtual Event
[Event Link]

Wednesday, August 6, 2025
In Conversation with Danielle Allen
6:30 p.m. @ Under the Cover KC, Kansas City, MO
Ticketed Event - Limited Space, RSVP Now
[Event Link]

Saturday, August 9, 2025
Romance Bookstore Day
Grand Gesture Books, Portland, OR

Wednesday, August 13, 2025
In Conversation with Kennedy Ryan
7:00 p.m. @ Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh, NC
Ticketed Event - Limited Space, RSVP Now
[Event Link]

Thursday, August 22, 2025
7:00 p.m. @ Two Friends Bookstore & Cafe, Bentonville, AR
[Event Link]

As a reminder, if you preorder August Lane in any format (hardback, ebook, or audiobook), you'll receive a free songbook with all four complete songs I wrote for the novel, plus behind-the-scenes bonuses about the writing process. That includes purchasing a copy for one of the events above! Just upload proof of purchase at hachettebookgroup.com/preorder-august-lane. You can also order a signed copy at WordsWorth Books, which will come with an exclusive art print.

Hope to see you soon!

• There’s another Goodreads Giveaway for an early copy of August Lane that ends on June 18th.

Enter Here

• On Wednesday, June 18th at 6 p.m. CT/7 p.m. ET, I’ll be joining and Adrienne Gunn for a conversation about all things pop culture and romance. You can register to attend the conversation here. You’ll also be eligible to win a book bundle of all the books we’re releasing this summer.

• August Lane was one of People Magazine’s Most Anticipated Summer Books! Myah Ariel also said the book “comes at a perfect time in the cultural zeitgeist,” in this roundup of anticipated romance novels, and Tara DeWitt gave me a compliment I plan to print and frame on my wall in her collection of 8 Sizzling Summer Romance Novels to Keep You Sweating All Season Long.

• It was also named one of the 26 Best Summer Reads by Oprah Daily, a Best Summer Book by The Boston Globe, and included in this roundup of 8 "Spicy" Romance Books For The Steamiest Summer Reading In 2025 in Brit + Co

• I was honored to be included in this lineup of powerhouse Black romance authors (Kennedy Ryan, Tia Williams, and Danielle Allen) in this excellent Refinery29 article: These Black Women Authors Are Reclaiming Romance—One Page At A Time.

• August Lane is the Diverse Spine Summer Reading Series pick for August. If you order a copy from Loyalty Books, use code DSPINES15 to get 15% off their featured summer picks.⁣

• August Lane is also the September Friends and Fiction Book Club pick! I’ll be discussing the novel with them on Facebook Live on September 15th at 7 pm Eastern time.

Writing Book Music

June is Black Music History Month, and this year feels particularly significant. Beyoncé made history by winning Album of the Year and Best Country Album Grammys for Cowboy Carter (prompting them to split the country award into contemporary and traditional, because sometimes they don’t even want our rhythm). Kendrick Lamar just set a record for the highest-grossing rap concert ever. At a time when acknowledging our musical heritage has become a radical act, these stories matter more than ever.

In less than two months, I’ll release a book about two Black country singers finding their way back to each other via music writing sessions. I’m not a musician. I don’t play an instrument. And yet, I decided to write about it anyway, a decision I repeatedly kicked myself for making while drafting the novel.

My first few attempts to write lyrics were terrible. They were so bad that I told my editor to ignore them during her edits and treat them as placeholders. I watched YouTube videos about music theory, read memoirs from songwriters, and took a MasterClass from Alicia Keys. Nothing helped. Then I realized something that changed everything: I wasn't writing music. I was writing book songs.

Book songs aren’t meant to be heard; they’re meant to be read. If you’ve ever read the lyrics to your favorite song, you might be surprised by how simple they are. That’s because it’s meant to be heard alongside a very deliberate musical arrangement. My mistake when trying to write songs for my book was forgetting one of my fundamental rules about writing fiction. Write fiction. Not real life. Write a lie that feels like the truth in a way that’s meaningful and compelling. Write a song that is interesting to read.

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Now you’re probably thinking, isn’t that a poem? Maybe. Sure. But I’m not a poet either. When you’re intimidated by a task, it often helps to frame it in a way you understand. So when you read the songs in August Lane, you’re still reading my prose. The sentences are in a different form. They rhyme at the end. But the way I approached writing each line was no different from how I developed narrative or dialogue.

Here’s an example. One of my favorite songs in the book is “Another Love Song,” the one Luke stole from August. Different lines from the song appear in the story, but the refrain “I just want to write a love song” appears the most often because a) that’s how refrains function in songs, b) I wanted evoke the ear worm feeling of a radio hit you encounter everywhere and c) it encapsulates the ultimate desire of both characters. These are two people who want to sing what they love and love who they love without pain, fear, or judgment. The entire song is quoted at the end of the book to demonstrate how the meaning changes over time: from a teenager’s initial attempts to talk about love, to Luke’s pining anthem, to something altogether different and hopeful by the end. This is an example of a song doing story work. And (hopefully) pulling that off is one of the things I’m most proud of about this book.

Making it Work

If you’re planning to write a music book and, like me, the thought of writing songs makes you break out in a cold sweat, here are a few tips that might help:

• Song Maps by Simon Hawkins is a fantastic resource. If you're adding songs to your novel, this book will save you months of frustration. Jeff Tweedy's How to Write One Song helped me think about imagery and metaphor in ways that applied to all my writing, not just lyrics.

• Focus on the rhythm rather than trying to come up with a melody. I always focus on sentence rhythm while I write, but this time I tapped them out on my desk to give them a bit more attention.

• Study songs in the genre to understand common themes and structure. Country music often focuses on the past, second chances, regrets, and the desire to go home. I wrote with those themes in mind, but filtered it all through the voice of my characters.

• To ensure the song is doing that story work I mentioned, I asked myself key questions as I was writing them: Who is the point of view character in this song? Where are they emotionally when they write it? What does it say about the story’s overall themes of love, redemption, and forgiveness?

• I also recommend using placeholders during the first draft. Revision is where the magic happens. When I understand my characters and themes better, I can develop fictional art that fully serves the story.

The Music of August Lane

This summer brings a wave of music-focused romance novels, from Alicia Thompson's Never Been Shipped, Kristina Forest's The Love Lyric, and Myah Ariel's No Ordinary Love. I’ve read and loved all of these, so if you’d like to read more musical romances, I highly recommend all of them.

I created a playlist of songs that shaped August and Luke’s story while I was writing, and a few recent discoveries that capture their vibe perfectly. I’m so excited to share it exclusively with my newsletter readers. Even if you're not a huge country music fan, I hope something in this resonates with you.

Preorder Bonus: If you preorder August Lane in any format (hardback, ebook, or audiobook) you'll receive a free songbook with all four complete songs I wrote for the novel, plus behind-the-scenes bonuses about the writing process. Purchase your copy and upload proof of purchase at hachettebookgroup.com/preorder-august-lane. You can also order a signed copy at WordsWorth Books which will come with an exclusive art print.

What creative field have you struggled to capture in writing? Any recommendations for music books that manage to make you feel like you are sitting at a concert?

August Lane is Read Now on NetGalley for 72 hours, no approval required. If you have an account, go grab your copy now!

Request Your Copy Here

I’ve been tagged in a few early reactions to the book and I’m pleased to say that readers are being wrecked in the best way (which was my intention).

wrote this amazing review and called it “perfect, raw, beautiful, and remarkably timely.”

Aleia’s Library | Diverse Romance Book Reviews

Cowboy Carter Meets Romance Meet Second Chance

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a year ago · 10 likes · 3 comments · Aleia

This review from theliterarybee on Instagram called the love story “gravity defying and haunting,” and declared it one of her favorite second chance romances ever.

Hearing from readers who've experienced August and Luke's journey has been overwhelming in the best way. With Beyoncé's Cowboy Carter tour dominating conversations about Black artists in country music, the timing feels especially meaningful. I wrote this book as honestly as I could manage, which means it deals with real issues around artistic theft, family trauma, and healing. The tension between August and Luke burns slow and electric, but their path back to each other isn't simple or clean. If you're planning to read it, check the content warnings on my website first.

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If you review books online or just want an early look at a story that's apparently leaving readers emotionally compromised, now's your chance. I’d love to know what you think!

Amazing Substack authors are releasing some very cool books this summer. Kirthana Ramisetti and Andrea Bartz put together this amazing Authorstackers Beach Read Guide that I plan to use to organize all my preorders. Check it out!

I shared a post on Instagram about three Black women country singers I interviewed when researching August Lane. They’re so brilliant, talented, and generous with their time. If you’re on that platform, follow them and listen to their beautiful music.

I’m starting to question productivity advice that encourages writers to follow rigid routines. And this is coming from someone who wakes up at the same time every day, even on the weekends, to write first thing in the morning. I’ve tried tracking daily word counts. I block websites (Goodreads? Don’t know her). I try to do what everyone says to do: treat writing like work to be productive.

And yet, I’ve been dragging. I’ve been working on the same book since last year, and I’ve just gotten past the halfway point. Something wasn’t working. Then I listened to Feel Good Productivity by Ali Abdaal, and realized that I may have been going about being creative all wrong. His central thesis is that productivity flourishes through joy. Feeling good about our work doesn't just make the process more enjoyable. It transforms the quality and quantity of what we produce. He tells a story about sticking a Post-it to his computer that read “What would this look like if it were fun?”

I tried it. I looked at my current approach to writing and tried to imagine what a fun writing practice might look like. Then I realized that I didn’t have to imagine it at all.

My writing practice used to be fun and effortless. Years ago (many years ago), I posted fan fiction on LiveJournal. LiveJournal fiction was a very specific vibe. The stories were short, the writing was third-person smutty lit fic, and high art was capturing the entire five of your favorite characters in a 100x100 pixel icon. Every word I wrote and posted on that site was born from a love of writing. Over the past few weeks, I tried to imagine how to capture that feeling again.

Here's what I came up with:

If this were fun, I'd work on more than one project at a time. I used to have three to four projects going at once. I don’t have the time or bandwidth for that now, but focusing on a single project puts more pressure on that story. Now that I have multiple works in different stages – drafting one, researching another, outlining a third – the stakes for each project have decreased. If one book flops, there's always the others I've started.

Just typing that made me less anxious.

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If this were fun, I'd explore different story lengths—short stories, novels, novellas, and flash fiction. I tried all of them back then. Each format exercises different writing muscles and challenges me to experiment with structure, and I still love doing that. In my short story "Every Christmas," each section captures a Christmas moment over five years. August Lane follows the structure of a country song. My current work in progress is a conversation between the POV character and the reader.

If this were fun, I'd write different genres. Nothing used to intimidate me. The only test for whether I could write something was whether I loved it enough. Obviously, mastering a new genre requires research and practice, but if this were fun, there would be no "I can't write X.” There would only be "Do I love X enough to create my version of it?"

If this were fun, I'd surround myself with community. My LiveJournal friends showed up consistently, loving what I loved and encouraging my wildest ideas. Want to cross your favorite fantasy show with a pulpy action flick and gender-swap the main character? They’d beg me to push the envelope further. Now, my goal is to find friends who will read my wildest creations and love me for them.

If this were fun, I'd constantly learn new skills. LiveJournal made me want to understand graphic design. I taught myself Photoshop (the old version, without one-click background removal), studied design theory, and learned basic coding to customize my journal. Creative work naturally spawns more creativity, not for marketing or social media, but for the pure joy of making something new. Recently, I started learning Procreate and Procreate Dreams so I can create animated art for my novels.

If this were fun, I'd seek challenges. When a project intimidates me, it’s because I'm writing outside my comfort zone. That makes me a better writer. Slightly uncomfortable but not paralyzed is the ideal state for my best work.

If this were fun, I'd write for my readers. All my fan fiction was about women of color, many from supporting roles in film and TV, with tiny online fan bases. And I didn't care because that small fan base was my entire audience – I was writing for them and myself. I never thought about whether people who didn't care about those characters would like my work. In publishing, there are numerous stakeholders to please, and universal appeal can benefit your career. But writing to please everyone produces something as generic as bottled water, where only packaging distinguishes yours from the rest.

If this were fun, success would mean accuracy, not marketability. In publishing, success means sales figures, buzz, and publisher support. But when writing is fun, success means achieving your vision. Did I create what I set out to make? Does this feel true? Does the character sound like a real person? Does the story make me feel the way I want to feel when I seek out stories like this one? The answers to those questions are the only ones that matter.

I’m posting this newsletter in case some of you struggle with the same feelings and find it useful. But I wrote it for myself. With another book release approaching, I'm struggling to remember why I did all this in the first place. It was supposed to be fun. Lately, it's been stressful, time-consuming, and frustrating – and I know it will continue to be all those things. But it feels like fun again when I do more of the things I listed above. Like I’m playing my favorite game.

Words Worth Keeping

“All that matters is that you are making something you love, to the best of your ability, here and now.”

― Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being

What would your creative practice look like if it were purely fun? What elements from your earliest creative experiences could you recapture now? Have you noticed how your relationship with writing changes when you reduce the stakes and increase the play?

In August Lane news, the book was recently featured in TheSkimm and made Jordy's Most Anticipated Summer Reads Book List! Events for the book release are coming together, and I'll announce dates and locations soon. Hope to see some of you there!

Remember, the preorder campaign for August Lane is still running. Those who preorder receive an exclusive digital songbook with bonus content. You can also order a signed copy from WordsWorth Books and receive an art print with the link to the songbook printed on the back.

Writing Update

I passed the 50K mark on my current manuscript this week. As an over-writer, I'm not sure what that means for the final word count, but this is typically the stage where I convince myself I've made a terrible mistake and start rewriting from the beginning.

What's helped keep pushing forward is approaching this manuscript as a writing practice rather than a project. My goal is 500 words. Some days, that's all I manage, and others, I write more or none at all. The practice has become meditation rather than work. I’m trying to place one word after another without judgment.

Sprinting with friends has also helped. Each time we get together (virtually) it reminds me to treat writing as art creation rather than product development. Their excitement for my work is contagious and powers me through another week of getting words on the page.

Current Obsessions

I just finished Lone Women by Victor LaValle, and it belongs on every "if you loved Sinners, read this next" list. LaValle blends suspense with a portrait of early-twentieth-century America through an unforgettable cast of women who find horror and sisterhood in a brutal landscape.

If you’re a fellow soap opera devotee raised on Victor Newman and Erica Kane, check out Making: Stories Without End. This exploration of soap opera history illuminates how crucial the form was to television and storytelling evolution. The episodes about Black and queer representation offer insight into how these narratives shaped mainstream understanding of marginalized communities.

I plan to share more about how I’m working on changing my relationship to reading and writing in my regular newsletter next week. Drop me a line and tell me how it’s going. How are you feeling about the way you’re engaging with your creative practice? Have you read or listened to something that lit a fire under you recently?

You should; it’s fantastic. As I watched it (and loved it), I thought about something I read in Danse Macabre by Stephen King. He discussed how critics dismiss horror that’s too successful in its intended purpose, scaring the viewer, because they tend to read with "the head rather than the heart." They analyze themes and structure while devaluing the deliberately engineered bodily responses that define the genre.

I've always considered horror a sister genre to romance. Both genres play what King calls “nerve music.” They create stories designed to evoke physical responses. And both genres often face the same critical dismissal. Despite being the publishing industry's most profitable genre, romance is frequently overlooked by critics, award committees, and the literary establishment. When readers admit a book made them sob or turned them on, their reading experience is often derided as shallow.

But a physical response is the entire point.

Reading With Your Body

Romance is nerve music. We read it with our bodies. Different subgenres create distinct reactions (as mentioned in my note about this topic below).

Romcoms should make you laugh. Angsty sagas should make you cry. Dark romance should make you anxious but also turn you on.

Yet, admitting that we seek the latter remains deeply taboo. Society's discomfort with sex creates a culture where readers feel compelled to intellectualize their reading preferences. We're taught that seeking emotional and physical responses to fiction is less worthy than pursuing intellectual stimulation. This dismissal is particularly common with open-door, high-heat books. When erotic romance is accused of being pornography, it’s often defended by pointing to positive rep and the educational value in the depiction of healthy sexual relationships.

Which is great. We need those.

But it can also sound a lot like claiming romance is head music. To a certain extent, sure, but it’s also okay for arousal to be the point of a thing. Just like it’s okay for fear to be the point of horror. Or for anxiety to be the point of a thriller. When we shy away from acknowledging that we like some things because they turn us on, we internalize the message that the only legitimate engagement with fiction is with our minds, while focusing on our bodies is embarrassing.

But this either/or framing misses what makes romance truly powerful. The genre is a unique blend of intellectual and physical elements. A good romance book creates an immersive reading experience that is challenging to achieve in any work of fiction.

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As an aside, I must acknowledge that the critical bias toward head music creates insidious double standards for marginalized authors. We face more pressure to produce "educational" work rather than stories designed primarily for pleasure or sensation. A higher standard for potential value is placed on the acquisition of our books. Look at the low expectations for Sinners, despite so much star power. I suspect it’s because the film industry didn’t believe that people would come out for an R-rated Black horror film. It’s fascinating to watch the intellectualization of its success, rather than simply admitting that it got the head and heart music blend just right. It was smart, beautiful, and scary. The perfect sensory assault.

Making It Work

When I develop a book, I always think about how I want the reader to feel. This consideration shapes every decision from plot structure to dialogue.

I look for writing comps that match the emotional experience I want to create. These aren't traditional comp titles that match characters or storylines. They capture the feeling I want my readers to experience. While developing The Art of Scandal, I read, watched, and listened to media that evoked something sexy and forbidden. For August Lane, I consumed things that made my chest ache.

This approach changes how I draft and revise my work. I continuously ask: "Does this scene create the physical response I'm aiming for?" Sometimes a scene works perfectly on paper, with sharp dialogue and tight pacing, but it doesn't evoke the right bodily sensation. That's when I know something needs to change.

Romance writers often debate craft elements, such as point of view, plotting methods, and character development techniques. These discussions matter, but I've found the most helpful question is "How do I want the reader to feel in this moment?" The answer often guides me toward the right creative choices.

Words Worth Keeping

When a plot resolves, readers are satisfied, but what they remember of a novel is what they felt while reading it. Hooks may hook, twists may intrigue, tension may turn pages, and prose may dazzle, but all of those effects fade as quickly as fireworks in a night sky. Ask readers what they best remember about novels and most will say the characters, but is that accurate? It's true that characters become real to us but that is because of what they cause us to feel. Characters aren't actually real; only our own feelings are.

From The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface by Donald Maass

What books have played nerve music for you? Have you noticed how your body responds to different romance subgenres? Have you ever caught yourself intellectualizing your response to avoid admitting how deeply a book has affected you physically?