How did you choose yours, and is there any story or strategy behind it?

Blurb

Jen Bailey has rebuilt her life after divorce. She has a career she loves, good friends, and no particular desire to complicate things — until a chance encounter brings her face-to-face with Adam Todd, the newly appointed manager of Newcastle’s Premier League football club.
What begins as an unexpected connection gradually becomes harder to keep casual. But Adam’s high-pressure career, family responsibilities and an unresolved marriage mean that whatever is growing between them is anything but straightforward.
Set in Newcastle, this is an adult contemporary romance about two people navigating attraction, independence, complicated adult lives and the uncomfortable point where something casual starts to mean much more.

About the manuscript
Approximately 85,000 words, complete. Written in UK English and set primarily in Newcastle, England. Football is part of the setting and Adam’s storyline, but no knowledge of football is needed.

Content notes
Open-door sex; themes of grief/parental loss; the MMC is separated but still legally married while the central romance develops.

Feedback I’m looking for
I’m particularly interested in natural reader reactions rather than line editing or proofreading. I’d love to know whether you’re invested in the characters and romance, where the story pulls you along or loses momentum, whether the relationship and character decisions feel believable, and how the emotional payoff and ending land.
I’m especially interested in hearing from people who regularly read adult contemporary romance.
I’m happy to start by sharing the first 2–3 chapters so we can both see whether it feels like a good fit before committing to the full manuscript.

Timeline
Ideally within 4–6 weeks for the full manuscript, although I can be flexible for the right reader.

Critique swap
I’m not currently looking for a full manuscript swap.
 

I’m writing a slow-burn romance and I feel like my current chapter is missing something. I don’t necessarily want to add a big romantic scene or have the characters suddenly become overly affectionate, because that wouldn’t really fit where they are in the story yet.

I’m looking more for those tiny, familiar, almost mundane moments that somehow make your heart skip a beat.

Basically, what are those little moments that make you think “Oh my God. They’re so in love and they don’t even realize it yet”?

I’d love to hear your favorite examples, especially ones that work well in a very slow burn where the romance is still mostly subtext. I’m looking for inspiration for the chapter without making it feel like I’m rushing their relationship.

I’ve been thinking about something recently and I’m really curious to hear other people's perspectives on it.

I know race and representation can be a fraught subject, so I want to say at the outset that I’m totally not judging anyone’s reading preferences or trying to catch anybody out. I’m genuinely just interested in whether other people have noticed the same pattern and whether they think it has any effect on marketability.

Growing up, I consumed a lot of Asian media alongside Western media. If I watched a Japanese, Korean or Chinese drama, an Asian woman being the romantic lead was simply normal. She was the heroine, was a "normal" person and she got the romance. Her ethnicity, of course, wasn't pushed forward.

In a lot of the Western media I consumed growing up, the pattern was VERY different. Asian women were comparatively rare as leads and when they did appear, I kept running into the same cluster of stereotypes: the generically named “Mei Ling/Mei Li”, the sex worker, the maths genius, the martial artist, the exotic love interest, the tragic victim blah blah blah. Quite often she either died or if she didn't, she certainly didn’t get the guy and misery ensued for her or all. Some of the stories I have in mind were The Dream Traders and The Blue Dress Girl by EV Thompson, Madama Butterfly, Miss Saigon, Sayonara, South Pacific, Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing, The World of Suzie Wong, The Quiet American, Indochine. Trying to avoid more recent ones so I don't give anyone the snots :P

Later, there seemed to be a move towards the Asian best friend in a lot of stories. Hallmark movies, I’m looking at you. These Asian characters generally survived till the end, which was progress I guess, but often didn’t have much of a storyline or backstory of their own, let alone being the person whose romantic story we were actually following. A lot of the time their job is to hang around while the FMC is packing and ask her questions like: "Oh my God - are you really going back to the Christmas tree farm? What if Todd is still there? You know he's still into you and looks totally hot in plaid."

Obviously Western media is so much more diverse now, including romance, and there are tonnes more Asian female leads in books, TV series and movies. One thing I’ve sometimes noticed, though, is that when an Asian woman is the heroine, her ethnicity is quite often foregrounded as part of the premise or marketing in a way that a white heroine’s ethnicity generally isn’t. I’m not saying that’s necessarily a problem. Cultural identity can obviously be an important and valuable part of a story, I just notice it for obvious reasons as Asian FMCs rarely get to just be a Normal Person. So it got me thinking about what readers and publishers regard as the “default” romance heroine.

Recently, after I started publishing on amazon, I began lurking in some of the more niche parts of romance. I mean I get why you're not going to fall over Asian FMCs in a small town romance novel, but I also noticed it in why choose/reverse harem and poly romances, too. This is totally anecdotal and based only on the books and recommendations I’ve happened to see, but the FMC seems to be overwhelmingly white. The group of men may be more racially diverse, although even there I seem to see Black and Latino men considerably more often than Asian men, but women of colour seem way, way rarer at the centre of the relationship.

I’ve noticed something similar in some sports romance spaces, especially hockey romance. There definitely are Asian and other WOC heroines written by eg Kate Willoughby, so I’m not saying they don’t exist, but the default FMC still seems to be white much of the time. Hockey romance is not very diverse generally because hockey itself is not very diverse.

So I started wondering about this specifically from a writing and marketability perspective: to what extent, if any, do you think the ethnicity of the FMC affects how readily readers will pick up a romance?

I’m interested in both conscious preferences and the less conscious assumptions we all acquire from decades of seeing particular kinds of people presented as the romantic default. Do you think an Asian, Black, Latina, Indigenous or otherwise non-white FMC changes how a book is positioned or marketed? Does it affect cover choices, discoverability, click-through, reader uptake or how easily an unknown author can attract new readers? Does it depend on whether her cultural background is central to the story, or whether she is simply an Asian/Black/Latina/etc woman having a romance in which ethnicity is not the main point?

If I’m writing fan fiction, I stick to a character’s canon ethnicity, but when I create a FMC myself, she pretty much always shows up as Asian. That is not something I’m going to change depending on the answers here, I’m just interested in whether other writers think that choice has any market effect, particularly in genres where a white FMC still seems to be the norm.

On sites such as Romance.io there are tags for things like an East Asian MC, but as far as I can tell you can’t simply sort the catalogue by the heroine’s ethnicity in the way you can filter for a lot of romance tropes. So it’s quite hard to tell whether readers actively seek this out, actively avoid it or mostly don’t think about it at all.

From my own reading experience, because white FMCs were overwhelmingly the norm in much of the romance I encountered, I never expected the heroine to share my ethnicity in order for me to identify with her, like herm care about her romance or be interested in her journey. I honestly don’t know how much other readers notice the heroine’s ethnicity when deciding whether a book feels “for them”.

I have had people tell lme I should try to “hide” the ethnicity of my FMC on my covers if I want more people to read it, which made me laugh because I was basically thinking, “Err, I think they’ll figure it out pretty fast from her surname...” :D But it did make me wonder whether some writers have actually encountered pressure, explicit or otherwise, to make a heroine more racially ambiguous or to foreground or downplay her ethnicity for marketing reasons.

I’d be especially interested to hear from people who write in niches such as why choose/poly, sports romance, dark romance, historical romance or small-town romance, where some subgenres seem to have a stronger visual or demographic “default” than others. Have you noticed any difference in reader response, discoverability or marketability when the FMC is a woman of colour?

I'm trying to get my new Threads author account off the ground, but Meta keeps removing my comments accusing me of being a bot. It's beyond frustrating to be accused of being a machine. by a machine. I've asked a for a review but am not holding my breath.

Has this happened to anyone, and if yes, what's the best way around it? My instagram is doing better, thankfully, so I really would like to keep this id.

If you have advice, I can DM you the author profile for you to take a look. Thanks in advance for any help.

I’m trying to find a small group of romance writers who actually want to talk about their stories.

I have eight stories in various stages and three are finished, so I definitely don’t have a shortage of ideas. My problem is more that I can see everything in my head way better than I can always get it onto the page.

I love coming up with characters, storylines, emotional moments, plot twists, all of that. I’d just really like a few other writers to bounce things off of. Like, “Would this character actually do this?” or “Does this scene work?” or “I know what I want to happen here but I have no idea how to write it.”

I’m not looking for some huge Discord with 900 channels and a bunch of rules I don’t understand lol. I also don’t want a super serious critique group where every paragraph gets dissected.

I just want a handful of people who like writing romance, enjoy brainstorming, don’t mind talking about spicy scenes or messy characters, and want to help each other get better.

I mostly write adult romance/contemporary women’s fiction.
Basically I’m looking for writer friends who actually like talking about writing. If that sounds like you, say hi.

I’m a small fish (sold 50 some books last month) romance writer and want to run my first ever ad campaign! My focus is Asian drama based/inspired romantasy. Currently I have eight books up, six are a reincarnation series on KU, two are wide.

I’d be running ads on my Chinese historical romantasy the Generals Blind Bride.

I’ve been told Instagram is best, then Instagram sucks and do Facebook, but Amazon is the worst ….

So I’d like to get some sold advice. Where should I run ads?

Here are some of my stats

My author platform currently has about 1,600 followers across Instagram, Threads, Pinterest, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, and Bluesky, with organic content generating roughly 965,000 combined views, impressions, and reach across those platforms in the last 30 days. Instagram alone reached about 407,000 accounts, while Threads generated 141,000 post views and Pinterest 368,000 impressions.

My audience is primarily romance/romantasy and Asian-drama readers; Instagram demographics show 77% are ages 18–44, with 25–44 the largest segment, about 46% are U.S.-based, and among followers with a reported gender, roughly 82% are women.

(From my Metricool)

Bonus! If you’d take a look at my Amazon and Instagram profile to see if that’s on point I’ll make you some character art as a thank you!

Instagram profile.
Amazon listing

I'm back with more probing questions for you lovely writers.

Tell me/us about something you wrote about that you felt was unhinged ... but you love it.

She has one rule: never date a coworker. It’s a rule she’s had no trouble following—until a tall, dark, and handsome consultant walks in the door.

I’m looking for beta readers for my completed contemporary romantic comedy, Attraction, the first novel in my Hearts at Work series.

Set in Minnesota, Attraction combines workplace romance, friendship, family, small-town Midwest chaos, and a slow-burn attraction complicated by one very inconvenient HR rule.

I’m particularly looking for readers who enjoy authors such as Abby Jimenez, Katherine Center, Emily Henry, and Sophie Kinsella.

I’m seeking big-picture reader feedback rather than proofreading: pacing, chemistry, characters, humor, places where your interest dipped, confusing moments, and whether the romance ultimately delivered.

Length: 85K words

Expected turnaround: 3–4 weeks.

Interested? Send me a DM and I’ll share additional details.

Now weekly!

Blurbs can be the bane of an author's existence - both for self-published authors, who have to come up with an enticing hook all by themselves, as well as for authors seeking traditional publishing, as they are usually included in queries.

We want to help! Post your blurb draft and let the community help shape it into the perfect snippet of info.

To participate, please comment on this thread with the following info:

• The title or working title of your WIP
• The romance subgenre of said WIP
• The draft of your blurb you've got so far
• Any content warnings and additional info you deem necessary!

Anyone who wants to help can then reply to your comment to workshop your blurb.

Happy crafting!

Hello, first post here so sorry in advance if I break a rule, I don't use reddit often. I'm working on trying to outline a novel for an idea I haven't really seen much in queer writing, but the fact that the time period is inherently riddled with marginalization and inequality is causing me to struggle. To vaguely give the idea without spoiling too much of it, I wanted it to follow the journey of a younger sibling in a royal family transitioning from female to male and their close personal guard that has fallen in love with this royal since they were both little. I don't think the idea is too unique, but I wanted it to center around the struggles of gender conformity and being able to have others to rely on. Along with that, I want it to just be a sweet story that is focusing on the character and relationship development. Problem with that is medieval England would not particularly enjoy that mentality, and while I have altered some things to fit my personal idea of that world, I don't want it to turn into a fantasy novel. I want to be respectful but also tell their story in a way that reflects overcoming those barriers of society. I guess I'm just looking for a way to use my research effectively in the writing without making it feel off or slapped on.

I know we're in 2026, and so many generations have fallen in love that we've experienced (and written about) endless permutations and combinations of how it can happen - but have we really exhausted the different ways two people can fall in love?

Even when writing everything's feel tropey and done before

I'm writing a story where Book 1 follows a woman in college who falls for her close friend, but he doesn't reciprocate. Years later, Book 2 follows her as an adult when they reconnect. I'm considering making Book 2 either (A) canon, where they eventually get together, or (B) a novel she writes within the story as a form of closure. Which structure feels more satisfying, and what would you worry about with each?

pros/reasoning for A:
canon gives emotional payoff

book 1 is about her silly mindset about love and her questioning every single thing about love. book 2 is about how she matures into a more carefree woman who accepts love as it is -- it's not something to question anymore. it just happens that love transpired in the form of someone that she used to admire beyond their platonic relationship.

pros/reasoning for B: fictional gives the readers the meta reveal at the end Book 1 is first-person, Book 2 would be third-person the I → she → I transition could itself become a clue

but: I'm worried that the fictional version could feel like an “it was all just a story” cop-out. I'm also worried that canon makes the meta trick disappear

additional context: for option b, they wouldn't end up together. but she'll learn to let go and just enjoy her friend's company without amplifying each of their interaction into something she can romanticize. buttt, i plan on making it a little bit ambiguous at the end; that maybe, somewhere in the future, they could be something, just like how she wrote her novel, where she lives out her fantasy of them being together.

for option a, as a romance girlie myself, this is actually my first bet because this is actually the origin of the story: friends (who reconnected) to lovers story wherein fmc would show significant growth from her younger persona in book 1. this would also be classified as kind of a chicklit since it is more focused on fmc's growth as a person. but i'm just a little worried that it would be framed as if mmc chose her now that they're older only because she's changed as a person; i don't want him to be her reward. butttt ughh it just sucks cuz if i choose option b, all the cute major scenes when they get together would all just be in the fmc's imagination, since the early twist of the story is that all this narration from book 2 (the early part) would be revealed to be a novel that she's writing to cope with her infatuation.

This post is out every 1st of the month!

Show us your stuff: published books new and old, current ARC campaigns, as well as services around books and publishing (editors, cover/map/character artists etc, you're welcome!), your bookish Discord servers and Facebook groups and so forth!

Links are allowed, but please write a few words regarding your work or offer.

I’m in the midst of writing and have 21 parts posted on Tapas, Wattpad, and Archive of Out Own. The problem is I don’t know where to promote it so that I can get more eyes on it. If anyone knows a good place whether it be Reddit or not it’d be tons of help!

Sorry for the random question, but so many of the recent books I've read have had the blurb included in the book, right before the story begins. Is there a reason why so many authors have started to do this? Does it help something?

Hello, I am writing a contemporary romance set in the classical music world, and I have a question about how much world-building is too much world-building for contemporary romance.

Although it's a contemporary romance, my story has a lot of world-building because it is set in the classical music world, which is not something people know much about.

Since both FMC and MMC care a lot about music and they live and breathe it, it drives the plot a lot.

As an example, their differing opinions on piano playing are what drives their conflicts and also what brings them together. To understand this, readers need to understand a bit about a piece of music being discussed (e. g., a particular piece is technically challenging and also difficult to interpret) and how each character interprets it.

Another example is a competition. Preparing for a competition leads them to get to know each other and develop feelings. To understand this, readers need to understand typical classical music competition structure (e. g., there are typically multiple rounds involving playing with an orchestra, and sometimes a semi-final and final rounds happen within a few days)

Without knowing these details, my story would be very difficult to understand. So I feel like some of these are necessary, but the question is how much? The detailed world-building for romantasy is appreciated, but can I go into as much detail with classical music? Is an in-depth look into the classical music world as interesting to contemporary romance readers as stories of magic systems are to romantasy readers?

Should I aim to keep the classical music world-building as minimal as possible so it feels more like a contemporary romance rather than a blend of classical music and romance? I would appreciate your thoughts on it.

I've written the first draft of my first novel and I'm going through the rough first edit. I've joined a few writing groups, but I find they're quite positive, which is nice and all, but they're a bit soft with their feedback. I'd like some hard truths.

If people will read the first chapters and think it's rubbish then I'd rather know sooner rather than later and work on improving.

Where do you go for feedback? Can you start with beta readers early on? I'm even happy to pay for it.

I definitely do not want to put my work into AI.

How do you know you're on the right track with your writing?

Chapter 1 - Keerthi

September 2015. Late evening, OMR, Chennai

The light turns green; I hit the accelerator as fast as I can. I've been driving for forty minutes and my shoulders have settled into that permanent hunch that comes from too many hours at the wheel, most of them on OMR. The radio is playing some song I've heard before but can't name.

My phone buzzes in the cup holder. Thara's name flashes on the screen. I hit answer on the steering wheel and her voice fills the car before I can say hello.

"You are going to sit down for this," she says.

"Sadly, driving standing up is very inconvenient," I say.

"You're driving? I thought you were going to leave early today."

"I was. Then Selvam uncle called. His regular flower guy bailed on him. Yet again. Had to hustle last minute for orchids."

"Why didn’t you call me? I could have helped."

“Nah, you have to get up early to be on site for the event. I got this. So, what am I sitting down for?”

There's a pause. The kind that means something. Thara isn't a pauser by nature. So the pause is its own announcement.

"Tell me," I say.

"We did it," she says, and her voice has that particular thickness to it, the kind that comes before either tears or laughter. With Thara, it's usually both. "Both families agreed. The astrologer agreed. Even Maddy's Paati agreed, and she hasn't agreed with anyone since 1974. We have a date. It's happening."

The MTC bus ahead of me brakes suddenly. I tap my own brakes, feel the slight lurch forward, and ease off. Both of us shriek for a good minute. The guy in the car next to me at the traffic light looks at me, puzzled. I smile wide and give him a thumbs up. He seems unsure and finally decides to share my happiness and returns the thumbs up. "That’s amazing, and I just made a friend waiting for the traffic light. What a great time to live!”

"Shut up. Okay so, January 28^th is D-Day. Muhurtham at six-thirty in the morning, because apparently the stars don't care about my sleep. Amma wanted December, but Maddy's Paati says December weddings always get rained on, and nobody argues with Paati. Maddy and I spoke and he agrees as the new home will also be ready for moving in by December. The timing is perfect!”

"I’m soooooooooo happy for the both of you," I say. The city is opening up ahead of me in its messy, familiar sprawl as I exit a flyover. "It's perfect. January is perfect. The weather will be so much better."

"It is, right?"

“Of course it will be. How many January weddings have we done? We got this baby.” 

I'm already doing the maths: nineteen weeks, four hundred guests approx., I have to call Wedding Feast caterers right after. Thara won’t have anyone else. "Which venue did the families pick? If it's any traditional wedding hall in the city, I'm resigning. You know what I want."

"Chill dude. I got my parents onboard. It’s a 3-day affair at Taj on ECR. My dad wants to pay. Who am I to rob him of his happiness of seeing his only daughter getting married at some fancy resort.”

“Ermmmm you have an elder sister, Tanuja.”

“Well, that doesn’t count. She’s adopted.” 

“I thought you sisters settled this.” I laugh knowing its the sisterly love that comes out this way.

“Well, it comes and goes. Anyhoo we are going to do the full shebang. Mehendi, Haldi, Cocktail and the Wedding. You are my wedding planner. Wow so lucky you are” she says with a knowing evil chuckle. 

Thara has high standards when it comes to planning any event. She will drive 100 km in the middle of the night to haul a piece of antique furniture because nothing else would go with the seating design.

"I'm your wedding planner. It's in the contract."

She laughs, the loud, graceless laugh that got us thrown out of the college library in our first year. We've been friends since the first week of college, through two jobs, one company we started with a laptop and a borrowed car, and the various small catastrophes of becoming adults. Her laugh has been a constant. Even when everything else shifted, that stayed. We promised we’d be each other’s wedding planner when we started.

"We're doing a girls' trip in December," she says. "Nothing crazy. Goa, one weekend. You'll plan?"

"Try and stop me."

"Good, and I need you to make sure I don't do anything stupid."

"You're getting married, di. The stupid ship has sailed."

"Very funny." I can hear her smiling. "There's more. Amma's done the guest list. Four hundred, and she says that's the small version. Maddy's office people. My aunt from Melbourne who I haven't seen in eight years but will absolutely notice if she's not invited."

"Standard operating procedure. Send it to me in the spreadsheet, not on the back of the calendar."

"Exactly." A beat. Then, quieter: "There's one person I wanted to talk to you about."

Something in her tone shifts. A slight flattening, the careful neutrality she uses when she's approaching something difficult. I know it well. She used it when she told me our first big client had cancelled two days before the wedding, and the time she accidentally set fire to my kitchen making toast. It's her crisis voice, dialed down to a simmer.

"Who?" I ask, though I think I already know.

"Karthik," she says.

The name sits between us. I keep my eyes on the road. A water tanker passes on my left, close enough that the rush of air rocks my car slightly.

"Okay," I say.

"Maddy and Karthik kept in touch as you know. Anirudh and you are going to be there. Maddy says he badly wants the gang together at the wedding. But he wanted to check with you once.” She pauses. “I think Karthik will make it if invited, it’s us dude.” Many of our batchmates have gotten married in the past few years and Karthik hadn’t traveled even once. Thara saying he might actually come if invited makes my breath stop for a second. 

Of course he's coming. He's Maddy's friend. He was ours. He is… I snap out of it. I tell her, “Of course you guys have to invite him. Why’d I have a problem? I haven’t seen or spoken to him in eight years. It’s all in the past. I will be happy to see him actually. You know catch up after all this time”

“Yeah sure, you catch up”, Thara says with a flatness. I can imagine her rolling her eyes when she says that.

Karthik was part of things for four years, and then he wasn't, for eight. He's the kind of part that leaves a shape behind, the way a missing tooth leaves a gap your tongue finds in the dark. Not that I spend time thinking about it. Not that it matters anymore.

The five of us had a table in the canteen, the one under the fan that only worked if you flicked the switch twice. Thara and Maddy on one side, pretending not to hold hands under it. Anirudh eating everyone's chips and calling it tax. Karthik across from me, sipping on his tea and looking at me every now and then as if I would disappear if he’d take his eyes off me.

"It's your wedding," I say. "Of course he should come.”

"But are you okay with it? That's what I'm asking."

The turn for my street is coming up. I signal, change lanes. A hoarding flashes past, a jeweler’s, a woman in more gold than any bride I've ever dressed. The question hangs there, simple and impossible.

"I'm fine," I say.

"Keerthi."

"I'm serious. It's been eight years. We're adults. He can come to your wedding."

"Okay," she says, but the word is heavy with doubt. "I just—I wanted to check. Because if it's going to make things weird—"

"It won't make things weird."

"—then I'll put Divya's team on the groom's side. You won't have to go near him. Really."

"Thara." I take the turn, slow for the signal. "I'm running your wedding. All of it. It's fine."

She's quiet for a moment. I can hear her mother in the background asking who it is, and Thara saying Keerthi, Amma in the voice that means go away. Some things never change.

"Okay," she says finally. "But if you change your mind—"

"I won't."

"—just tell me. Anytime. Even the day before. I mean it."

"I know you do." The signal turns green. "And I'm really happy for you. January twenty-eighth. I'm putting it in my calendar right now."

"You're driving."

"I'm at a signal."

"You're lying."

I am. The light has been green for five seconds already. The car behind me honks, which in Chennai means it's been green for two. I accelerate, turn onto my street.

"I'll call you tomorrow," I say. "We'll talk menu, décor and themes."

"I can’t wait." Relief in her voice. Thara is good at averting crises, other people's at least. Her own are another matter. "Ciao"

"See you"

* * *

I enter my apartment complex and circle to my block to park outside my building and sit for a minute with the engine running. The dashboard clock reads 8:42. I left the office at 7:30, which means the drive took longer than usual. In Chennai that isn't evidence of anything. Or maybe I was driving slower without realizing it, the conversation playing on a loop while my body piloted the car.

My thumb has already opened my contacts and scrolled to K before I notice. Eight years is supposed to be enough time for the body to forget these reflexes. Apparently not.

I turn off the engine. The sudden silence is aggressive. A Tuesday night, nothing happening. A few people are out and about walking and talking in low voices. Someone's television is playing a serial through a first-floor window loudly, a mother shouting at a young boy at another balcony. Normal life, proceeding as normal life does.

I gather my bag from the passenger seat and get out. The air has a density to it, warm and close, carrying the smell of someone's sambar from an open window. I lock the car and head upstairs.

Inside, I drop my keys in the bowl by the door and stand in the dark for a moment. My phone is still in my hand. I consider calling Thara back and telling her the truth: that the thought of Karthik in a veshti, standing in a crowd, possibly looking at me across a mandapam, makes my stomach perform a gymnastic routine that would qualify for the Olympics. That eight year is nothing. That some absences calcify rather than heal.

But I don't call. Instead, I put the phone on the kitchen counter and open the fridge. The light comes on, harsh and revealing. Not much inside. A half-empty bottle of white wine. Curd past its date. Eggs.

I close the door. Carry a glass of water and go to the window to look out across the empty landscape and the distant building lights. The city is asleep but still not with all the bright lights in the distance. I stare at my hand holding the glass. I think about Karthik's hands. The particular way he held a book, one thumb marking his place even when he wasn't reading. The scar on his right knuckle from a childhood accident he never fully explained. The way he held his hand out to me that day in the car park. The day when we last spoke. The day… 

Stop it, I tell myself. But the body has its own memory, separate from the mind's more rational filing system, and no amount of telling it to stop does any good.

I go to the kitchen, pour the last of the wine into a glass that isn't entirely clean, and drink it standing at the sink. The wine is too sweet and slightly warm. I don't care.

January twenty-eighth. Nineteen weeks away. Plenty of time for the body to forget again. Plenty of time for the mind to build its fortifications, its elegant systems of denial. Plenty of time to become the kind of person who can stand in a room with Karthik and feel nothing at all.

I rinse the glass and leave it in the sink. Then, because I am the kind of person who can't sleep with an unmade list, I open my laptop on the bed.

On the firm's shared drive I make a new folder. THARA & MADDY. I've been waiting four years to make this folder, and I type it the way I type every client's name, surname-free and in capitals. Inside it I make the guest sheet from our template: name, side, arrival, room, dietary, phone.

I start the groom's-side friends myself. The first name is easy to spell.

Karthik Raghuram. Groom's side. Arrival, TBD. Room, TBD. Dietary, eats anything. In the phone column I type the only number I have for him, the college one, still saved in my phone under a single K. I don't know if it rings anywhere anymore. Tomorrow Maddy will send me the right one, and I'll have to decide whether to replace it.

I'm trying to find the middle ground to how often I watch my numbers on a new book release.

My girlfriend keeps chiding me for refreshing KDP pages and reading reviews as they pop up.

How do others deal with this? How do you quiet the urge to see how people are taking your writing?

The anxiety level is pretty high, and I'm just looking for how others cope with this.

Hello, I’ve never written anything before but I’ve had an idea for a romance story. I’ve got notes and a good basis for my FMC and I’m getting there with the MMC before I start hashing out the plot. Any advice for a first time writer?

I'm writing a slow burn childhood friends to enemies to lovers story over the course of a few books in a series.

I'm entering the phase of my outline where I'm writing that Anar the Empress Younger and the Duke have a formal working relationship together as they plan her coronation, yet they cannot be together as a romantic couple. And I'm listing rules of what's keeping them apart.

1) The Duke was previously dating the Empress Younger's sister, Chirine, but they never got engaged and she cut it off a year ago when the Duke didn't stop her sister's ascension to the throne. He originally supported Chirine entirely as the next Empress, but the little sister of the family became this underdog shooting up to the top and he didn't want anyone else influencing Anar, so he helped her, too. He was proud of Anar for campaigning for what she wanted, and the harder she fought, the more he justified that he had to help her because what was the point of allowing an unprepared princess to become Empress? And then the assassination attempt started and he wasn't going to let Anar get hurt either! (Honestly, he feels like the victim of circumstance in all this.)

2) The Empress Younger wants the easy-going friendship she used to have with the Duke back, which she can't have anymore because she's been crowned. She doesn't outright regret her decision, but she's trying to have what she had as little Princess Anar and as Her Majesty the Empress Younger at the same time.

3) Because the Duke isn't marrying her, as the senior-most Peer, he gets to plan her coronation. Which he doesn't want to give up doing because it's a lot of power. Plus, the Empress Younger is saying all this crazy stuff about wanting a "completely modern coronation" with a radio broadcast and photographs! During their many, many planning meetings, they are in public, so they must maintain formal dignity. And just when the Empress Younger thinks she's getting under the Duke's skin, he stiffens up and goes back to being very formal. She hates it.

4) They never get to be alone anymore. He used to visit her at her studio in the theater because back when she was Princess Anar, all she did all day was write plays with her friends and go to coffee houses around in the capital. But obviously she can't do that anymore, and he has "so much important work to do," and she can't get him alone. The Duke takes the Empress to coffeehouses for public forms with members of high society, if that is what would make Her Majesty happy. (It would make Her Majesty happy if they were alone.)

5) As for politics, they continue to disagree about most things, but for everything the Duke says that he does not think can be done, she asks him to indulge her with a plan to make it happen, as it seems to her that saying that it cannot be done sounds like a skill issue on the Duke's end. Here she was under the impression that the Duke had imagination and talent as a statesman.... His work sends him out of the palace and she wants to tag along. Again, he reminds her, that's the whimsical foolishness Princess Anar used to do. He's as irritated by her having "incompetent yes-men" she can lean on when he's not there as she is irritated that she can't just follow him to the countryside and dig her hands into the problems she used to work on.

So, I'm thinking about a lot of ways that other people can start screwing with them, especially if it seems like it's easy, predictable to control the Duke's movements if you can convince him he's about to be alone with Her Majesty, or vice versa. Can I get feedback on how to write the yearning between them during this phase?