“My downfall was when I first got a Kindle. I went straight to the self-published stuff the authors were selling for nothing. A lot of it was Romance. I read stuff my eleven-year-old self should not have been reading. But my favorite was called The ABCs of Kissing Boys. I read it multiple times. It’s about a girl who’s never been kissed. She falls in love with the next-door neighbor. She’d grown up with him. But one day she looked up, and he was different. And he was there. It gave me hope. I’d never been one who was sought after. I’d get these big, all-encompassing crushes. And they’d always just devastate me. But when I read these books, it was like: I can be her. It can happen. I fell in love with Romance. I even wrote my college thesis on it. There are a few rules every Romance must follow. Rule number one: it has to be about the romance. The book could be set in outer space. But it’s not about space exploration. It’s about two people who fall in love. Toward the end there will always be some sort of fight, or miscommunication. That’s the thrill of it. But it’s also the hardest part to do successfully. Because in the back of their mind, the reader knows. Rule number two: every Romance has a happy ending. Right now I’m still in my first act. A small-town girl moves to New York. She hasn’t found her dream job yet at a Romance publisher. But she’s working at an academic publisher, so she’s in the solar system. On weekends she works at a bookstore called Books Are Magic. Maybe one day, somebody will walk in. Boy, girl, doesn’t matter. They’ll buy her favorite book. Then they’ll keep coming back to buy the books she recommends. She’ll become the first person they text whenever they want to chat. She loves Corgis. So whenever they see a Corgi, they’ll text her a picture. There will be fights. Because this girl has never been able to stand up for herself. But she’ll feel safe with them, so she’ll stand up for herself. She won’t be made fun of. Or judged. She can say the most inane things. Every time she finishes a book, she can talk about it for hours. And they’ll be charmed. They’ll never say: ‘My God. It’s the same plot over and over.’”
dailybridgerton
andulkaphoto
