Emily Henry is the New York Times-bestselling author of four novels. She’s also a witty and deeply warm conversationalist! Our conversation in 2021 covered Henry’s approaches to character conflict, the bane of consumer capitalism, and the alchemical combination of truth and fiction that powers a writer’s imagination.
Writing can be a really solitary path. But the sense of a literary community is so strong in your social media presence and even your acknowledgements sections, where you’re constantly hyping up authors and their books. Can you chronicle that process of building a writing community for yourself and for other writers?
Yeah, it’s really interesting, because I think that’s one of the most common questions I get when I do my Q and As: how do I build my own writing community? And I always feel really guilty giving the answer because the truth is, it’s so much easier once you’re published, or once you’re on a publishing track. Because then, your agent or your editor will often connect you with people. One of my best friends now, my best writing friends, we shared an agent in the very beginning of our careers and actually still share a different agent. And our agent was the one who matchmade us and was just like, “You both are on the same track, your timelines line up as far as when you’re going to be publishing for the first time. And I think you’d really get along.” So we just kind of started talking on the phone. And then within a couple of weeks, I had flown out to visit her for a very long trip where we were like, this could go either way, we have no idea what to expect. And we just became best friends from that. But it’s really tricky. Because when you are - just like you said - in your solitary life writing in your own city, and especially now, when things are just very different than they were a year and a half ago, it’s so hard to know how to even find those people. Usually, it does seem like writing communities at this point form online. And even that is tricky, because everybody uses social media differently. So there are people who I think can really connect on a personal level over Instagram and see that they have a lot in common. But it’s not necessarily as organic as it might have been if they had just been in a writing group out in the real world, and been face to face.
I think one of the hardest things about being an emerging writer is knowing how to find other people like you. For me, I think, like I said, I kind of was very lucky to be set up with one of my best friends. And then also, through the early debut process, I met a lot of people through a debut group who became lasting friends. But now, I think because I am in a very different position than I was a couple of years ago, where people follow me on social media and interact with me. I remember that loneliness of trying to find those connections so badly. And so even though I don’t really have time to interact at this point on a one on one basis with every emerging writer out there, I’ve been trying to just make the information that comes my way available. At this point, I feel the only thing that I’m curating for anyone is just information that comes my way. I’m just trying to make it available to people who don’t even know where to look, because it’s so hard. No one gives you a binder with a list of things to do to start a writing career or start a writing community.
What was that initial moment of writing away from a community like for you, just before you got your first contract, while you were still writing your first books? It was The Love that Split the World — or did you write books before that was published?
Yes, definitely. I started writing books in college. And I did briefly query for a couple of those projects. I mean, I say briefly, what I really mean is I queried it for years, but I was so afraid, worrying, that I didn’t query often. So I would send out three queries and then wait six months and send out three more. It was just so terrifying. And because I didn’t have that writing community yet. I think it was especially nerve wracking because I think so much of the writing process and publishing process is just you asking Is this normal? Am I normal? And when you don’t have anyone to compare notes to, it’s very easy to feel like you’re the only person in the world having your exact experience.
So I actually signed with my agent for a different book that was a contemporary fantasy, Ancient Norse myth-inspired. And that one didn’t sell. It was like too close to the paranormal craze, which had ended fairly recently. And every editor was like, No, thank you, I do not want this. At that point, I think, is when she set me up with some other writer friends. You’re tempted to think that somebody is an overnight success, because all you see is the last night, and then the morning of them becoming read and well-known. But that is so rare, an overnight success. Out of my close writer friends, I don’t know a single one who had that path.
You studied writing in college, right? What was it like to write in that context?
So I chose my college based on the fact that it had a dance program that was not a conservatory, it was like any, basically anybody can do it. And I wasn’t good enough to go to a conservatory. But I wanted to study dance. And so I chose my college based on that, but I actually had a partial scholarship, based on creative writing samples that I had sent in. And so part of my creative writing scholarship was that I had to take at least one writing class per semester. And I still ended up, you know, taking dance classes all through college, but pretty quickly, I realized how much I loved my writing classes. And I think, before you go to college, or university or whatever, before you do that, it’s so easy to think that you don’t like school.And then when I went to college, it was like, Oh, you know, like these professors really, really care. And we’re getting so much more information.
And like, we’re not reading books without any context, we’re given historical context. So they make sense to us. I just loved school so much at that point. And actually, I wanted to be a professor right then. I remember meeting with my advisor, and he was like, just so you know, it’s very hard to become a professor at this point. Most competitive field, there are not enough jobs for how many professors there are. And then I think my junior year of college, or maybe even my senior year, I took a novel writing class where we had to write a novel in one month, like a really bad novel didn’t have to be good. It was the National Novel Writing Month format, so it was 50,000 words: a short book. But just realizing I could do that changed me forever. And I think that’s why I was able to start publishing relatively young, is because I had been forced to finish a book. And so from then on, whenever I would have an idea for a book, I would actually make myself finish a draft. And a lot of times the books were terrible, and I never looked at them again. But I knew I could finish it. And if I finished it, then I could revise it.
What was that first book? It was a middle grade fantasy. It was not good. But I think it’s also a very common thread. People don’t realize, like, if you talk to a published author, they will almost always talk about their earlier books and be like, actually, I reread it and it was bad.
But yeah, it was sort of like - it was so convoluted that I can’t even pitch it at this point. But it’s this children’s fantasy where there’s this whole other world inside of the Earth. And, you know, like, if there’s like a sky in the sky it’s just like the center of the earth, sort of like the absence of anything. And there were selkies. And, you know, sirens and just kind of like throwing every single fantasy creature into a book.
That’s really interesting, because I think I remember you saying in one of your interviews that you had been to all of the vacation destinations in You And Me on Vacation, and that you were freaking out over not being able to go to Palm Springs. But in general, as a fiction writer, you inevitably have to imagine situations or places that you’ve never been to or, you know, places that don’t exist. Can you talk about how you develop those settings or experiences, how you try to make them more alive?
Yeah, so with my contemporary fiction, I am almost always starting with setting, which I do feel like is technically the most boring way to start a book. But for whatever reason, it really works for me. And I think the reason I have written in the places that I have written, as far as contemporary fiction, is that I’m very familiar with those places. And so there aren’t just details in my mind that I know: this place smells like this. And it is this temperature. And there’s a shop that looks this way. All of that’s helpful. But I think also, the reason that I end up writing so often about places I’m familiar with is because of the emotional association with those places. Something I’m really concerned with when I’m writing is the atmosphere. So like with Beach Read, for example, I had gone to school on the shores of Lake Michigan, and had a lot of memories on that beach, on that lake, and, you know, had all these emotional associations for how a day at the lake feels. Versus you know, how a day in Southern California feels or a day in Florida. I had this very specific emotional association and nostalgia for each place. And so even though I was writing about a fictional town in Beach Read, it was still based on the feelings I had being in that place, the atmosphere that when I think of that place, you know, I kind of conjure up. And so the atmosphere is kind of the starting point for everything, because I’ll pick a setting based on that feeling. The book will almost always inevitably be infused with feeling that particular slant of nostalgia, I would say.
And so for You and Me on Vacation, it was a little bit different, because all of these places that I was writing about were places I’ve only ever been as a guest, I have never lived in any of them. My associations are different. There’s always sort of a vibe, I think, a rosy halo around your memories, where you maybe don’t think about every specific thing that happened there. But there’s a feeling.
And I think one really easy example for me is Poppy and Alex’s trip to New Orleans. I had gone earlier in the year to New Orleans with one of my very best friends. And it had just been like such a fun trip, even with all the things that went wrong. Looking back on that trip, I don’t think any one specific memory. But I’ve kind of reduced it to just walking down Bourbon Street while there’s music playing, and it being really hot and sticky outside, and feeling this very specific kind of happiness to be there with my friend. And that’s totally like why that trip made it into the book. I could imagine how Poppy and Alex would feel: how they would physically feel pretty dirty because it’s just so humid. But also their kind of happiness in that environment that’s loud, very colorful, lots of smells. For emerging writers, I actually get a lot of questions that are like how many details are too many when you’re building a setting, and I definitely struggle with this or at least really used to struggle with it where I’d want to put in every single detail to make a place to feel as real as possible. And now my advice is always, you know, maybe like three or four details, but you need to choose them really carefully, like they need to be meaningful details and you want to make sure it’s not just all visual. You definitely want to have a scent or a sound.
I think we, we get caught up on the literal sometimes when we’re writing setting or descriptions, or we just want to describe exactly how a house looks and how big it is, and all of that, when it’s like, really, if you just pick a couple of details that will do so much more work so much more quickly.
What you’ve been talking about with nostalgia earlier, especially when it comes to childhood and family relationships: that seems to be one of your central preoccupations writing-wise, especially in your past two books. In your life, what are some flashbulb moments, feelings, or memories from your own childhood that eventually made it into pieces of your writing?
Oh, that’s such a good question. One thing. So first of all, a very easy thing is that, like Poppy, I am the youngest child and only girl. And I think the reason I relate to Poppy so much is because she has this dynamic with Alex, that is sort of rooted in this relationship of always being the youngest or the tagalong. I fall into that dynamic so quickly, with so many people. And it’s something I often say: if I’m making some kind of decision that might be surprising or strange to people, I’ll just say, that’s just my little sister complex, where it’s like, “I can do it too.”
On top of that, just finding joy in poking and prodding the people that you love. I think it’s a very strange dynamic, but it’s one I’m familiar with. Even though Poppy’s backstory isn’t exactly the same as mine, that is one reason I think I feel closer to her than I have to a lot of my other characters: I exactly know the dynamic that she has, and it’s really based on my own experiences. There are a lot of other small, weird details that when my friends or family are reading, they will always be able to pick out and be like, Oh, I know what that is. And so a lot of times, it’s not the big overarching storylines that make it into the book: but there will be really small details that make the scene come alive, that did come from real life. And when for example I think of You and Me on Vacation, it’s really tiny. But early on in the book, Poppy and Alex are talking about the game that Poppy used to play with their brothers where they would go to the movie theater, and they would all see a different movie. So the flooded theater is based on a real theater.
It wasn’t just flooded once, it was flooded enough times that when my family read that book, all of us separately were like, yeah, I’ve been to that theater. And it would be so we’d be walking down the aisle in the dark. You’d be like, why am I hearing these little splash sounds? and then eventually look down. And there’s just water up to your ankles. And the worst part of that - the best part - is that we all kept going. And we weren’t like, never again, will I frequent this theater. Instead, it was like, well, it’s a really cheap theater. We’ll keep going. We don’t know what the standing water is. But that’s okay.
So there’s a lot of little tiny things like that. The things I think that often make readers think it’s too weird, that wouldn’t happen, are almost always things that I’ve just pulled directly from my life. And it’s because even in the moment, you’re just like, who would let this happen? Why would a theater be flooded like this mysteriously? It kind of sticks in your mind and, and you have to do something with it, you have to put it into a story.
That tangentially brings me to something else that I noticed about You and Me on Vacation, which is that it in particular — although I think I see this in a lot of your other books too — is very engaged with a central character conflict. So if you were the main character of a novel, what would your conflict or difficulty be? And have you ever written about what you perceive as your own central difficulty?
Oh, that is such a great question. And I’ve never been asked that. So I think in a way, for Beach Read and You and Me on Vacation: I was taking something very specific from my own life, actually, and kind of working through it. With Beach Read, it was writer’s block. I wanted to write about writer’s block and figure out, what’s going on? What’s stopping me from creating? And then I wrote a whole book, and it was like, I guess I’m cured.
Of You and Me on Vacation: early on, there’s the concept of millennial ennui. I think since then, the New York Times has posted articles about, like, languishing. And I think it’s the same thing. The starting point of You and Me on Vacation really was that concept of millennial ennui. I was having a conversation with another writer friend. And like, I asked her do you just feel like you’re all out of things to want, like from publishing? Not a good feeling, but very relatable, I think. And she just started laughing and was like, yeah, totally. I’ve been trying to ask writer friends about this. And some of them have looked at me like I grew an extra head. And so we were kind of going on and talking about it more. And we called it millennial, just as a joke.
But then as we were describing it more, I was going into depth about how I felt. And then I was like, Oh, I guess I just described depression, and then we just both started laughing so hard, because that is our exact sense of humor to be like, this is terrible, but it’s kind of funny. But I think that’s common for people. In their late 20 and early 30s, especially, but I would also guess, almost any stage of life: to feel, Oh, I finally managed to do this thing I’ve wanted to do for so long. And now what? It’s a very strange feeling, especially if you’re a driven, motivated person. You’ve made so many of your decisions based on trying to reach this goal. And then once you have the goal, you can celebrate for about a day and a half. And then after that, you’re sort of like, what do I do now? How I got into Poppy’s head was knowing, Okay, I want to write about a character who has worked very hard to achieve her dream. She has it and she feels guilty about it. But she’s kind of wondering, What now? That wasn’t quite what I thought it would be. I wouldn’t say that’s her central conflict. I think it’s the conflict that gets her into the story. But her single conflict is much more stuff from her youth and understanding what’s driving her decision making.
So all that as a really roundabout way of saying I often do pull one piece of conflict for my own life and kind of focus on that. But I guess if I’m thinking about what my central conflict would be, if I wrote my own book, I think it would be about people-pleasing. I think my character would have to learn to stop trying to make everyone else happy. And to get over needing everyone to like her. So maybe I’ll write that one next. Who knows?
If you wanted to describe yourself as a rom-com character, what would be some of your defining traits? Oh, my gosh. Well, I have done multiple video events in the past year where I immediately spilled a full drink on myself and then had to leave the entire event. Every time I have a group text with some writer friends, and every time I text them to say, “it happened again.” They always tried to assuage me by saying, that’s great. It just cements your brand as a chaotic rom com heroine. They’re just needlessly klutzy. And I don’t think I’m like that klutzy in most ways, but specifically, I am constantly spilling full drinks, often at the worst possible moment.
So I think that would be like a defining characteristic that people would find really irritating because they would be like, we’ve done this so many times. Nobody’s that klutzy. Nobody would spill a full glass of Aperol Spritz on herself while doing an Aperol Spritz sponsored event, which is exactly something that happened. It kind of happened off camera. So then I was just trying to pretend that it was normal. But then the next time I picked up my cup, it was totally empty.
Delicious.
Yeah, yeah. Delicious, empty air. My hands were wet and bright red.
And beyond that, I think, I’m just a mess. I’m very messy. There’s a reason that we’re doing this interview in this corner, where you can’t see anything else in my home. I kind of love clutter a little bit. I mean, I don’t love how it looks. But I love accumulating. I have 5000 books, just kind of piled in towers on my desk over there.
You communicate a lot about the places, and the people, and the communities you love. Your main characters in your recent novels are writers. I was just wondering specifically about the writing aspect. Poppy’s a travel journalist, she writes an aspirational lifestyle that she converts into these write ups. January writes about her beliefs about what it is to be in love and to live a perfect life.
A lot of the crises happen over a conflict with the idea of projecting an ideal life or values when those are constantly changing over the course of their lives. So would you say that you tie a lot of your identity into the books that you write? And do you think that the way you’ve portrayed those pieces of yourself has changed over time, as you’ve written new books?</strong>
Such good questions! So I guess the thing that kind of drew me away from writing teens into writing adults was specifically realizing that I got to my late 20s, and felt like I was having this second coming of age where, like you said, all of these pieces of my worldview and my identity were changing. And I was very surprised, because nobody had mentioned that you have another coming of age. At the same time, my parents were in their late 50s, and I was watching the same thing happen to them. I was watching them go through these coming of ages, where they were renegotiating what mattered to them, how they wanted their lives to look.
I think that usually starts kind of with a crisis, like you were saying, where there’s this cog that gets thrown into the machine, and suddenly things don’t add up quite right. And you’re looking at your life in a whole new way and thinking like, do I want to fix what this is and keep going in this direction? Or do I want to do something new? I think it’s really funny, because I didn’t even know that that’s what I was investigating when I started writing Beach Read. You know, the book is meta in so many ways. But to realize now, I was kind of doing that same thing: asking, is this what I still want to be writing about? Or do I want to be exploring these new topics? And so I was doing that without even knowing that’s what I was doing.
It’s really easy to write about writers because it’s what I have been doing seriously for the past 10 years. And I don’t feel like I’m an expert on many things. I don’t really feel like I’m an expert on writing, even. But I am at least familiar with what it’s like to be a writer.
Something that I have been seeing in my own life, and in a lot of my friends’ lives who are around the same age as me, is this renegotiation that we’re talking about, as far as, Who am I? What are my values? What do I think the truth of the world is? One of the big pieces I’ve seen with a lot of artists and writers, just creators of any kind, is getting to this point of being in their 30s. And realizing: I’ve put my entire identity into what I make. That’s really scary. Because if something changes in your life, and you can no longer make that or be that version of yourself, then you have lost your identity. I think that’s exactly what Poppy is going through, honestly. She has thought her whole life, I am this type of person, I have wanderlust, I want to see the world, that’s who I am. I’m a travel writer. To have kind of ascended to the highest level of that version of herself, and then realize, maybe this isn’t even what I want, is just terrifying, because that’s how she defines herself.
And it’s been this interesting transition for me as a writer, to try to pull back a little bit from the idea of, I am at a core, my writer, and to shift that perspective to, I am a person who writes, and if something were to happen, and I couldn’t write anymore, I would still be me. I wouldn’t be losing my entire sense of self. Ultimately, it’s interesting that now I’m realizing during this conversation that both January and Poppy are kind of faced with that exact crisis of, if I can’t make this than who am I?, and having to kind of get to the point of, I am me, and it doesn’t matter what I put out, and that has to be enough no matter what else I’m doing in my life.
And now that I’m thinking of it, with both of these characters, I think the catalyst is that their relationship with someone changes, right?
All the little details are different, but it is very similar: our identity can be wrapped up in what we do, what our jobs are, what our passion is, but it also can be wrapped up in people. And so for January, she’s been telling herself about her life, her whole life, was that she was the product of a very loving marriage and that her family was so tight knit and so unshakable. And to have that questioned, didn’t just change who her father was to her, it also changed who she was. Yeah, I think we figured it out. We figured out what one book I write is.
So what’s one thing that you think you’ve learned from your characters?
Wow, that is so good. Okay. With January, specifically, I think that was really helpful to me to meditate on the idea that things are always going to go wrong, and be unpredictable. There’ll be moments of extreme ugliness in life. And I think it’s always a really good lesson for me to relearn that you really do have to seize your happiness in the moments you have it and appreciate it. It’s not cheapened by the fact that you won’t always have it, that makes it that much more special. I think that’s just like a lifelong pursuit for most people. But especially anyone who is anxiety prone, who tends to worry or think about the future or overthink things. I think it’s really a lesson that we constantly have to learn that you need to be present in your life. You don’t want to waste all of your time worrying about what could go wrong. So that’s probably the big one I really love.
I love that with writing romance, you’re engaging with optimism in a way that I think becomes less and less common as you get older: as you become a little bit more hardened and more cynical. And it’s really nice to be reminded that sometimes, life really is as simple as meeting someone and falling in love and having this very special bond that makes everything else seem brighter and more beautiful.
Was the transition into romance writing something you did after finding your husband?
That’s also a fun question - I met my husband when I was super young. I met him when I was 18. We started dating when I was 19. We’ve been together now for a long time, over a decade.
I have always been sort of a romantic, and sort of a pragmatist, but I didn’t even really start reading romance until after I had written the very first draft of Beach Read. I love rom com movies, but I hadn’t really read any romance novels. And then when I finally sent it to my agent, she immediately had a recommendation, which was to go read Sally Thorne’s The Hating Game, which I did, and I loved. After reading that, that sort of opened the floodgates for me and I found out that I loved reading romance. It became this really, happy, bright spot in my life: no matter what was going wrong, or how stressful the world was, I could always kind of pull myself into this better space by just spending an hour reading a romance novel.
I think that was kind of how I accepted that I loved romance was just having written one and being like, I guess this is something I guess this matters to me. And you know, I basically never looked back but I often find myself just thinking or even saying aloud I’m so grateful for romance authors because they made my life so much better. Like even before I was publishing in romance, just finding these writers I love and am able to infuse my life with.
These are very happy, joyful reading experiences that kind of melt my stress away and just leave me feeling warm and fuzzy. It’s just such a valuable gift that I think has been underappreciated for a long time. And now that the world is especially scary, I think a lot more people are reaching for that book with a happy ending at this point and understanding the value that that brings into your life.
When it comes to writer’s block, who are you more like? January, or Gus?
Actually, I think it was a little bit of both. With Augustus, what’s going on with him is basically burnout. He’s been working so hard. The fear of letting people down is pressing on him very heavily. With January, her worldview has been challenged. And that has made it really hard to write anything out. I wrote Beach Read in 2016, which was a fairly dark and tumultuous time. For reasons unknown. It was just really scary. It really changed the way that I saw people, which I wasn’t really prepared for. I think I had always kind of thought people are ultimately good and loving and empathetic, that they just care about each other. That was really thrown into flux for me. And I just thought, Are people inherently selfish? What is the deal?
That did kind of affect my writing, because my books have always been very optimistic at their core. Bad things happen to my characters in almost every book I’ve ever written. And there’s usually some element of grief. But the whole idea of almost anything I write is always that it’s worth it, that life is worth it. And that love is worth it, no matter the pain that comes with those things. It was really hard to be in that sustained phase of sadness and pessimism.
It’s one thing to feel anxious for a day or a couple of days. But it’s another thing to feel anxious for six months about the state of the world, and the danger to our health, and all of that. That really stifled my creativity. I was suffering career burnout before I wrote Beach Read. And then I also was kind of navigating changes to my worldview and trying to find hope in new places at that point.
Chronologically, when were the times that you felt that kind of like big dramatic burnout? What stage of your career were you in?
When I wrote Beach Read, I had just turned in my second YA novel. And I loved that book, but it had been so emotionally grueling to me; when I set out to a beach read, I really felt like I just needed something light, and fluffy, and fun. Nothing heavy needed to happen. And then immediately, I made January’s dad die.
Very light, very fluffy.
I think I was having a little bit of burnout then just because I’d had back-to-back books that felt really in-depth as far as research and emotional excavation. And I think that at this point, I’m kind of having my second little wave, and I have a break scheduled now. But I just turned in my third rom-com, which I can’t talk too much about just yet. And just immediately was like, I need to take a trip somewhere. So, I scheduled some travel because I haven’t really left my house. I think burnout is so normal, but every time it happens, you think, Oh no, I’ll never write again or I’ll never meet again, whatever. And really, you just need to go live your life and remember, you’re not just like a vehicle for art. You’re a human being.
At the beginning of You and Me on Vacation, Rachel says this thing that struck me a lot. And it’s something that you brought up a little bit earlier, that idea of that millennial ennui. She says, specifically, “contentment is a lie invented by capitalism.” The happily ever after kind of cuts to black right after the relationship starts in both Beach Read and You & Me on Vacation. So does Poppy ever find contentment? Do you believe in contentment?
You might have moments of contentment, but I don’t know that most people ever get a life of contentment. And I think that that is okay. Because the world needs help. And I think if you can find something that you can bring to the table that you’re excited about, and that gives you purpose, that’s much more meaningful to me.
I mean, everybody’s allowed to feel however they feel. But I think so much of the image of contentment really is something that’s being sold to us, specifically to literally sell us things. Rachel is an influencer, basically, who is posting these beautiful curated images. And I think it’s so easy when you’re on Instagram to be scrolling and see somebody’s beautiful home or their beautiful outfit or their beautiful hairdo, and have this very subconscious thought, that if you had that, you’d be happier. And obviously, deep down, we all know that that’s not true. I mean, you might be happier if you can’t afford to go to the doctor. The things that are essentials, that’s different. But there’s so much of just selling us stuff.
And I think actually, when COVID first hit, that became glaringly obvious to me because we were watching a lot more TV, seeing a lot more ads and the ads shifted to be, “we’re all stuck at home right now. Maybe you need this.” And the ads for Facebook are trying to kind of convince you that Facebook will make you connected and it will make you have a community and it will bring this love and light into your life. And you’re like, that is not how Facebook works. That is the opposite I would say of what happens there; it is the wasteland. But seeing that and same thing, you know, I have an I have an apple computer. It’s not like I’m, like, necessarily morally opposed to that. But just all like the apple commercials where it’s just like, wouldn’t your life be better? Wouldn’t you, like have these loving wonderful conversations with your family from across the country, if you had a new iPad? In moments of crisis, I think it becomes so obvious that you’re being sold something in a way that usually you kind of are just inured to and don’t even notice. Or at least I don’t.
Poppy’s journey throughout the book transitions her away from her preconception that she needs to make work the core of her life. So if purpose matters more than contentment, what do you think her purpose becomes as the story progresses?
That’s such a great question. I think there is value and purpose to just being a good friend, or a good partner, daughter, sibling. I think it’s so easy to feel like we need to be something extra to matter and to be important and to leave our mark. But I think all the time about my grandfather, who is the kindest, most loving person I’ve ever met. And he has had a ton of different jobs in his life. It’s not like he left behind this specific visual legacy. It’s not like he was like, “I have built a lot of boats, and now there are boats my name on them,” or something. He’s just a guy.
I think so often about becoming that person. Being an a person who’s at his age, and just being so loved by your family, and so admired because of your kindness and your generosity. I think there’s almost nothing more valuable than starting a legacy of kindness, and love, and generosity. I think I think that’s kind of what we’ve been talking about, as far as accepting that being a human being is every bit as important as being an artist. And just valuing that it’s okay, if at the end of this life, you haven’t gotten a platinum record, or hit the New York Times list, or any of that. Because as much as you want those things throughout life and fun achievements and goals, to give you kind of like a sense of direction, I think that the number one thing that you’re going to look back on is the relationships in your life.
And so I think that’s also another reason that I love writing romance so much: because it puts value on that. It says that “this is a worthy story,” even though it’s not like solving a murder, or saving the whole world from an evil monster. It’s just, this is a story that is deserving of time and attention. That brings beauty and love into the world and makes things a little bit better than they were.
It’s so hopeful to think of romance that way, but it’s also very heartbreaking to think about the fact that romance as a genre is so undervalued. That people shoehorn it into a certain class and say, “this is not literary.” How has your relationship with the genre category of romance changed over time?
I love this question. It’s so interesting, because like I said, I’m kind of a late bloomer as far as reading romance comes. And I’m so now dedicated to the genre. I love lending my romance novels out to people who don’t really read romance, and knowing what book they’ll need to slip into the genre and understand it. One of the best compliments I get is that Beach Read or You and Me on Vacation was someone’s gateway romance novel, because it does sort of straddle the line of women’s fiction, or general fiction and romance. But whenever I talk about it, I really talk about it as romance as much as possible. I think people who haven’t really read romance don’t understand that there are a lot of great romance writers out there who are, every bit, if not more talented than me, writing deep complex characters with lovely writing. Claiming my books as romance is really specifically important to me. Because I do want people to understand I’m not ashamed of this genre. And I think that if you haven’t given it a chance, you’re really missing out.
I think that’s been a big transition going from having not even really read romance to really understanding not only why it matters so much to me personally, but what people are missing out on. It’s just this gift, that you don’t find in every other genre, necessarily. This safe space to still examine hard things in life. It’s not like nothing goes wrong in romance novels. There are plenty of romance novels that dive into childhood trauma or complex family relationships. They managed to do that in this really safe, warm way where ultimately, the main characters are going to be okay. That makes it feel so much better to investigate these difficult topics.
Oh, by the way, I’m not sure if you’re aware, but you have a cameo on the podcast 99% Invisible.
Do I? I had no idea!
It’s from the episode called “The Clinch,” where they talk about that dramatic, often half-naked dip pose that is so common in Harlequin novels. The show brought your book cover up as an example of a new trend of less explicit covers, with marketing that might be more socially acceptable to put in the windowfront display of a store.
So it’s interesting that you mentioned Beach Read as a gateway to the rest of romance, Literally, it gets people to look past the cover instead of saying immediately, “this is not for me.”</strong>
Yeah. Yeah, I think. I mean, that was, that was something that intimidated me growing up and seeing those covers, I really did not understand what these romance novels really were. Especially because people would mock that and denigrate it so much. And so then to get to the point where, you know, now I love romance, those covers don’t put me off at all I know, you know, I know what kind of book I’m looking at it. And it’s a valuable tool to me. But I think like you’re saying this kind of cutesy illustrated covers, were sort of a way to try and draw in new romance readers, which romance readers have always been around, they’ve always been voracious, but to draw in new readers who have been intimidated by kind of the classic covers. And I think that so many people like me are finding out that they actually love these books. And the only reason they didn’t pick them up before was because people kind of like made it into a joke when it’s like there’s not really anything all that funny about it. It’s just, you know, a couple embracing like, maybe he’s shirtless, which is kind of funny, I guess. But at this point, it’s like I love both covers. I love the classic covers, now that I am no longer afraid of them. I love illustrated ones and it is sort of this like bait and switch in a way where you’re trying to kind of coax people who wouldn’t normally pick that book up into picking this up and realizing that they actually like it.
Thank you so much for your time. It was a blast talking to you.
Awesome. Thank you so much, Shereen. Seriously, like, I’m not just saying this. Your questions were so good. That was one of the best interviews.