I’ve been kicking around an idea this year. I want to write some romance novels…under Marin’s name. Maybe co-authoring them with Marin, who is, yes, the fictional romance novelist and heroine of my own novels, Love on Paper and Love on Film.
How weird is that?
I know, weird.
I was planning to try writing romance novels under my own name, since I like romance and there’s a strong market for it, but I couldn’t get over the hurdle of the blank page. I haven’t ever written a true romance novel—my other books are more in line with the somewhat condescendingly named category of women’s fiction—so I was feeling the imposter-syndrome in a big way. Then Anna, the organizer of a local writing group I attend, mentioned that I could try writing them as if they were Marin’s books, and the idea clicked. For one, Marin knows what she’s doing. She’d published 16 romance novels by the time Love on Paper started. So Marin can write a romance. And since I wrote Marin…well, nothing, really, except the idea gave me confidence. Like Marin would be holding my hand as I wrote.
Plus, I’m crazy about Marin and her story. So if I do this, I get to revisit her for awhile, even if it’s only tangentially. Maybe I’ll write an intro from her that summarizes “her inspiration” for the story and lets readers catch up with her, adding it to the front or back of the books.
Or maybe not. Who knows?
