you can feel it on the way home, way home

"you are in love" by taylor swift & writing about love

Do I believe in astrology? Not really. I recognize how unlikely it is, that people share all these characteristics just by virtue of having been born in the same month. I can see the ways that horoscopes are written vaguely enough to read anything into them that you might want to, that they are more useful as ways to reflect on your life than to actually predict something that will happen.

But also if you tell me your co-worker’s sign and the latest drama she’s been causing at work . . . OOOOF THAT TRACKS. I knew she was that sign!!! Fucking TEXTBOOK behavior!!!

Pisces memes are always hit or miss for me, because half of them focus on being overly sensitive (yes), creative and in a dream world (uh huh), and emotionally masochistic enough to listen to the same sad songs over and over (lolol I mean look where you are); while the other half focus on them being flaky (I am SO steady! keeping promises is important to me!), drunk/high all the time (sober as a judge over here lmao), and very woo-woo and spiritual (my discussion of astrology in this newsletter aside, that’s just not me).

One characteristic of Pisces that always throws me, though, that I can never decide if I embody or not . . . am I romantic? Am I a romantic person? Do I fall in love easily?

For a long time, I probably would’ve said no to all of those questions. There were a lot of quotes I loved to throw around in high school especially, about wearing all black to match my soul, etc. etc. (Yes, I was one of those. Pretty sure I stole that line from That Damn Cat starring Christina Ricci, though, so how badass could I have possibly been?) I’ve never been a Valentine’s Day person, I DO have a cheesiness threshold and it can be quite low, the introvert in me sometimes wants to not be around people at all much less intertwine my life with someone else’s.

But turns out . . . I think I’m hella romantic actually. I mean, surprise. It’s why I write romance? All I want to do is feel those big feelings and fall in love. The Pisces memes are true!!!

Whenever I read a romance — and especially when I write them — I love to think about when exactly the characters fell for each other. I’m obsessed with books that give that moment to you right in the text. It just HITS. Emma Mills’ novel First & Then is one I always cite for this, where you spend the whole book with this seemingly grumpy boy of very little words, and it’s only toward the end when he reveals to her the exact MOMENT he decided he liked her, and it’s not what you would expect.

I know “insta-love” gets a bad reputation in romance, sometimes deservedly so. I definitely have read books where I personally didn’t feel the chemistry, didn’t understand what the characters saw in each other, and especially if they said five words to each other and then the next chapter is like “I would die for him,” I’m a little like . . . wait, what? If being a “romantic” means I have to be willing to give up my entire species or time period or life to be with someone else, for example, then I guess my Capricorn/Virgo rising (I know it’s in there!) must be coming out because NO THANK YOU. Hugo Jackman could come into my timeline and be as sexy and weird as he wants and I would still be like, this has been fun but I’m a modern woman with access to memes and Paramore and recap videos of the week’s best baseball plays, so . . . have fun inventing the elevator.

But I’ve also felt strong connections to people right away, connections that honestly seem to ALWAYS bear out! This is probably confirmation bias but I feel like I’m batting a thousand here!

For example: I met one of my best real-life friends while we were both in a writing workshop. I heard a bit about what she was working on, I looked across the table and saw her, and I just knew that I could be amazing friends with this person. I’d been sniffling a little bit, still getting over a cold, and during a break in class she came over and said something like, “Something’s been going around — my kid was sick last week.” It felt especially compassionate and kind, the way she said it, when she didn’t even know me. And yeah, 15 years later, I still consider her one of my best friends. Isn’t that a form of “insta-love,” in a way?

Love does deepen and grow the longer you know someone. It’s not that I think “insta-love” or “love at first sight” is as substantial as the way love might feel with more time. And of course there’s a difference between like and love . . .

But I guess my point is, I do believe that you can have an instant connection with someone that you believe is the start of something big. And I do believe in specific moments that make you go, this is my person, this is the one. That’s our core job, as romance writers: to put those moments onto the page and hope that they come through.

That’s the joy of the job, too. If I told you about one of the most romantic things my husband ever said to me, for example, you would think it was BIZARRE. You would think it was so cheesy or weird or you wouldn’t understand why in context it was the kind of thing that made my heart flutter and can still make me feel that way when I think about it now. But in a BOOK . . . you can write that context in. You (hopefully) can give that fluttery feeling to your reader, who gets this very intimate look inside the relationship to know the characters’ wants and backstories and inside jokes and fears and everything else that adds up to make them perfect for each other.

I absolutely know, in my mind, key moments for both Lauren and Asa in With Love, from Cold World when they “fell” for the other one. Even if they didn’t fully know that was what was happening at the time, they were moments that switched something on like a light. Maybe one day, I’ll tell you what those are for me — but in the meantime, I think it’s fun as readers to think about what those moments are for us when we’re reading a romance novel. Or maybe that’s just the Pisces in me. :)

Currently reading . . . ‘Tis the season to read lots of shorter holiday-themed books, both to try to get into the spirit and also more importantly to meet arbitrary self-imposed Goodreads goals that don’t matter, so I’ve been reading Just for the Holidays by Adriana Herrera. Adriana has a GENEROUS backlist holiday-themed work, by the way, so if you find yourself in a similar situation she’s a great place to start. This one is a Harlequin Desire book and even though I cut my teeth on Harlequin Presents, I’m generally enjoying being back in the category romance world.

I also just finished , Okay, Cupid by Mason Deaver, a really charming YA romance about what happens when a cupid falls for one of the humans they’re supposed to be helping fall in love with someone else. Mason writes such relatable stories, and their EXCELLENT music taste always shines through (there are references in here to Phoebe Bridgers, MUNA, etc., although at one point the main character says they AREN’T FEELING PARAMORE but that’s okay, flawed characters are good *breathes into bag*)

watching . . . The family has been watching the Ultimate Beastmaster on Netflix over dinner every night, and man do we get into this show. I did not realize my children were this patriotic for one thing, because they really root hard for the Americans. It’s a fun show and I love watching other people do physical feats that I would never in my life even attempt. HURL my body ten feet to belly flop on an obstacle that might throw me twenty-five feet down into red-dyed water they call the beast’s blood, NO THANK YOU.

listening to . . . I’ve been catching up on podcast episodes, including the If Books Could Kill episode on The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, which was HILARIOUS, truly if anything will make you want to never curse again it’s books like this which try to be “edgy” by dropping f-bombs every other word; and then the Publishing Rodeo season finale episode where they talk about “life after debut year.” Since I’m currently living that life myself, I find it really interesting to hear their perspectives.