the long road to realizing i’m a romance writer

story time! also there’s some news in this one

Hi! Wow, it’s been a minute—I should probably have written this earlier! I’m realizing I build this newsletter up too much in my head and put too much pressure on it, when I should really be thinking: I’m just writing to my friends. It’s not Marketing, it’s not something that needs to be Perfectly Structured, it doesn’t matter how many people like and subscribe. I don’t have to be a Writing Craft Expert. (And reading some friends’ newsletters I’ve really enjoyed lately—shoutout to Emily and Gayle—must have inspired me, because after months of putting it off, I somehow woke up this morning itching to write one).

So, friends, let me tell you a story about how I didn’t know for a long time that I was a romance writer, and why I finally feel like one now.

To date—not counting some projects I worked on before college that I can’t remember very well—I’ve drafted four novels to completion, and two-thirds of a fifth one.

There’s been: Midnights With You (which for a long time I just referred to as D&J); a shelved YA romance; Road Trip WIP; Office Ghost WIP; and Aswang WIP. (For my non-writer friends who are like “what are these names??”: WIP stands for “work in progress,” and it’s a common practice to give your latest project a code name, because titling a book is hard!).

One of those has been published, and two others—Office Ghost and Road Trip—are slated to be published in the coming years (more on that in a moment).

When I started writing each of those three projects, I thought they were going to be something other than Romance. (Genre distinctions in publishing are a whole weird thing, but they influence everything from how you plot and structure a book, to what imprint you can sell it to, to how it’s marketed and distributed in stores.) And with each of these projects, at some point along the way I had a belated light-bulb moment and realized the story I was working on was actually supposed to be a Romance, and ended up going back and completely rewriting it. (This is, in retrospect, part of the reason I’ve done so many full rewrites.) It’s kind of funny to me that I was in denial about it, back to back to back!

I started off thinking Midnights With You was YA Contemporary, even though the love story was the central plot, and there’s an HEA. On the offer call with my agent, her main note was that there were two rival A Plots, the romance and the mother-daughter story, and I should pick one to lean into. At first I said “the mother-daughter story,” and she started laying out a whole revision plan for that path—but as I was listening to her, there was this drop in my stomach that told me, Actually that’s not what I wanted to do! So I sheepishly said: “Actually, sorry, can I change my mind?” and she launched into a whole different revision plan that she had ready to go for making the romance the A Plot. (The fact that she gave me the choice and had a plan either way really won me over.)

When we went on submission with Midnights With You in the summer of 2022, I started drafting another YA book, Road Trip WIP. And when MWY did sell in a two-book deal, I pitched the road trip book to my editor and she luckily gave it the green light to be my Book 2. I started off thinking it was going to be a Contemporary with a romance subplot—that it was primarily going to be a friendship story. And I love friendship stories—I think we need more of them! But also, apparently, I’m always secretly burning to write something else.

I finished the first draft of that book in January 2023. There was a romance subplot, but it unfolded largely over text messages—the main character was on a ghost-hunting road trip with her sister and reconnecting with her estranged friends in the different towns they stop in along the way. The love interest wasn’t on the road trip with them, but that subplot was clearly straining to break containment. So in fall 2023, after finishing most of the editorial process on Midnights With You and getting some generous feedback from my very patient friends about Road Trip WIP, I rewrote it from top to bottom to put the love interest on the road trip with the main character (while somehow still telling myself that the genre was Contemporary, and the romance was a subplot).

I was definitely having Second Book Syndrome with that story. There was a lot of thrashing and muddling around. I knew I needed to do a full rewrite on my own before I even showed it to my agent or editor. But still, I managed to turn that version in a few weeks before my April 2024 deadline. I knew it wasn’t quite right still—there was something about the plot that wasn’t gelling—but I just couldn’t see it clearly anymore and needed to let go of it for a while. (In retrospect, there was a clear throughline in the feedback from the friends who read that draft: They wanted more of the romance!)

I had another idea kicking around in my head this whole time—I’d been so excited about it, I talked to my agent about it while I was still in the thick of MWY revisions. So once Road Trip WIP was turned in to my editor, I pretty much immediately launched into drafting Office Ghost WIP. And between March and August, when I would get notes back on Road Trip WIP, I somehow managed to draft and revise Office Ghost.

This was my first foray out of YA, and when I started on Office Ghost, I thought I was writing a workplace dark comedy—that it was on the commercial end of Upmarket, that it was Book Club Fiction, something like that. Whatever it was, I had a blast writing this book! After working on two angsty, earnest YA novels back to back, it was refreshing to try my hand at being funny, to give my sense of humor room to run wild. I made myself laugh a whole lot while I was drafting this book, and I’ll probably be chasing that high for the rest of my life. While there was still a lot of flailing and gnashing of teeth in the drafting process, it was, relatively speaking, the smoothest and most joyful drafting experience I’ve had to date. I sent it in to my agent in July, and we did a quick two-week round of revisions to get it ready for submission in the fall.

I got notes back on Road Trip WIP shortly afterward, and I dove into a second full rewrite on that story. I’d finally resolved to embrace that it was a romance, replotted the book accordingly, and leaned in unabashedly to what I loved about it. And for the first time, that story started to feel like it was snapping into place. It’s a weird, bone-deep feeling of relief, finally hitting on what a story wants to be.

Then an editor wanted a call about Office Ghost! She asked me a lot of thoughtful questions about the different elements in the story, and which ones mattered to me the most. And in a moment that gave me intense deja vu, she said that I could take the story in a few directions—it could be a family drama, it could be more of a heist story, or it could be a rom-com. (There were, after all, not one but TWO love interests in the romance “subplot.”) By this point, basic pattern recognition was kicking in. I was inwardly laughing at myself as I said “Rom com!”, and based on the editor’s enthusiastic reaction, it seemed like she’d been hoping for that answer, too. So Office Ghost—a.k.a. UNFINISHED BUSINESS—sold to Bantam Dell in a pre-empt!

Here’s the longer pitch:

It might be too late to make her mother proud, but that won’t stop Ruby Ocampo from trying. It's been a few months since Ruby's mom, Adela, died at her desk at work, and in a haze of guilt and confusion about where her life is going, Ruby takes a job at TKCORP, the same sprawling, multi-sector conglomerate where Adela worked for decades—and where she always hoped Ruby would end up one day.

But Ruby’s struggling at work, especially now that she’s surrounded by constant reminders of her painful relationship with her mom. To make matters worse, Greg—Ruby’s estranged childhood best friend who Adela never quite approved of—also works at TKCORP, bringing back memories of things that are ancient history and not worth thinking about, okay!

To cope, Ruby’s been sending thoughts she would never say out loud into a Slack DM that’s just for her—until her mom suddenly writes back. Horrified that Adela is stuck haunting the company Slack, Ruby becomes convinced that all the ways she's disappointed her mother are preventing her spirit from moving on. So she vows to fix her failures one by one, listing all the ways she can live more like Adela would have wanted (Make friends at work! Get in line for a promotion! Date someone in a higher tax bracket!).

Greg is the only one Ruby trusts enough to confide in about this bizarre supernatural crisis, and as he helps her work through the items on the list, they grow closer—until her quest to free her mother puts Ruby on a collision course with the hot but vaguely sinister new junior executive at work.

Right now UNFINISHED BUSINESS is slated to come out in summer 2026, and Road Trip WIP (we’re still going back and forth about the title—told you it was hard!) is scheduled for spring 2027. In other words, I have two romance books coming out over the next two years! I feel incredibly fortunate, and also like maybe the universe is trying to tell me something and I had better sit down and listen.

Part of me wants to examine the reasons I was in denial about being a romance writer for so long—and then another part of me thinks, actually maybe the reasons are kind of boring? I clearly had a lot of internalized stuff to unpack about how it’s somehow shameful to like romance, and I probably cared too much about being taken seriously by the wrong people. I guess it boils down to: I was embarrassed to be myself and embrace what I like. Kind of sad! But also probably pretty common!

At the same time, there’s something life-affirming to me about how “being myself” and “doing what I like” kept pushing its way through the cracks in spite of me.

That same internalized stuff held me back from reading romance novels for a lot of my life—but man, I love romance. After UNFINISHED BUSINESS sold, I went out for drinks and then went to a bookstore tipsy and browsed the romance section, treating myself to a big stack of books. (They say to celebrate all your wins, and drunk book-shopping is probably one of the most fitting and satisfying publishing-milestone celebrations I’ve had so far).

A little while after that, Midnights With You came out, and one of my favorite questions to answer during my launch events was, “Why do you write romance?” It took me long enough, but at that point, I was finally ready to talk about it. (This has already gotten long, but maybe I’ll write another newsletter at some point about the answers to that question—I think they’re more interesting, ultimately, than the reasons that kept me in denial).

After doing some east coast travel for MWY events, it was really nice coming home to the Road Trip WIP revision, now that the story was humming. I turned that in, took two weeks off, and then jumped into doing a big overhaul of Office Ghost to make it more properly a rom com. In the process, I pored over the craft book Writing the Romantic Comedy and watched a lot of classic rom com movies, from the 1930s to the 2000s.

In February, in the midst of this revision, I traveled to Atlanta to be a panelist at Love Y’all Romance Book Fest, and I had such a great time! It was my first romance-focused event, and I think it’s my favorite event I’ve ever been to. I loved the energy of the readers who attended and getting to talk to them about their favorite books and tropes (at one point standing in a long line with them to meet Ashley Poston). I loved hanging out in person with author friends I’d gotten to know online, talking about the projects we’re working on in the green room, and listening to days’ worth of panels solely about romance.

On the flight back, I was annotating Writing the Romantic Comedy and having way more fun than I have possibly ever had on an airplane. (Reader, I hate flying—I am an incredibly nervous flier!) And I had this euphoric moment where I thought: Wow I could spend the rest of my life writing weird rom coms! Whether the economics of that will work out, whether traditional publishing will keep giving me opportunities to do this—all of that is a completely different story. But in that moment, I just felt so filled with love for the form of the rom com. Having a project in front of me that lets my weird sense of humor stretch its legs is one of the best feelings I’ve encountered in life. Trying to write falling in love in a way that feels real and earned is such a challenge, I’ll probably never do it completely to my satisfaction—so I’ll want to go on this ride again and again and again.

And I’m lucky that I’ll get at least one more chance to. Though it’s not mentioned in the PM announcement, Office Ghost sold in a two-book deal, and since turning in my big revision last month, I’ve been slowly outlining a new spooky rom com.

(And guess what I realized about Aswang WIP, that earlier project I drafted two-thirds of but then got stuck on? It is…probably also meant to be a romance! So at some point down the line, I’m hoping to go back to that and rewrite it accordingly. Slowly learning to work with myself instead of against myself).

From the story I just told, it probably sounds like things have gone pretty well for me—and they have! I’m super grateful. At the same time, debuting was pretty rough psychologically (and, you know—authors generally don’t talk as much in public about the rough parts). I don’t know how best to explain it concisely, except to say: Author life contains seemingly endless opportunities to feel like a failure that I hadn’t previously anticipated. But the way I felt on that flight home from Atlanta is the energy I want to channel going forward.

So, friends! That’s my rambly story and update. Thanks for being here, let’s do it again soon 💜

Love always,
Clare