Chapter One
The key to being a great romance writer, I’ve always believed, is to possess a true and unshakeable belief in the concepts you’re writing about; from game-changing first kisses to hard-won happily ever afters, slow burns so agonisingly tense they make you squeal, to the notion that every human heart has a corresponding match.
A good romance novelist has to genuinely believe that despite – let’s face it – a shit-ton of evidence to the contrary, love actually is all you need.
Even on the dark days. Even when life gets a little crusty around the edges.
Even then, you’ve got to be certain that spending the days of your life magicking up fictional people to fall in love with other fictional people is absolutely worth that time.
You have to stand firm in the conviction that your stories have meaning, bring joy, make readers feel better, more hopeful than they did before they experienced what you wrote for them.
Romance writing has no time for cynics. To be good at this job you have to be all the way, no doubt about it, totally in love with love. A true believer.
And I, Gertie Bickerstaff, was a true believer. The truest. Totally in love with love.
I was good at it too. Three and a half years into a relationship with charming, handsome, certified grown-up Henry Irving.
Four published romance novels under my belt.
His and hers sinks in a minuscule but dreamy Bloomsbury attic flat.
Would some say I was killing it at love?
Yes. Was I maybe a teensy bit smug about killing it at love?
Also yes. Was I surprised when Henry suddenly declared the need for a break because he’d been feeling ‘emotionally apathetic’ about our relationship?
Oh yes. When he said the words aloud, I dropped the slice of chocolate cake I’d been gobbling and yelled ‘Whaaaaaat? Noooo!’ like someone in a sitcom.
Emotionally apathetic. Brutal.
Serves me right for being so smug.
Now, four weeks later, my status as a true believer in love has been seriously shaken.
I sit at my kitchen table, staring at my laptop, trying and failing to write anything at all.
My hands hover in mid-air, anxious to thump down onto the bank of keys; to press letters into words into sentences into chapters into the final book of my Bedlam Creek romance series, due to land on my publisher’s desk in exactly seventeen days.
‘Come on, guys,’ I mutter, willing my characters to say or do or feel or think anything at all, wishing for even the tiniest bit of inspiration to strike. ‘I’m on a deadline here!’
But my protagonist, Cassidy Oakley, and her romantic hero, Ethan Calhoun, refuse to do anything – they just stand like statues in the final scene of the last Bedlam Creek book I wrote.
The image in my head that’s usually so intense when I write has faded to a static greyscale. My beloved Cassidy is utterly silent, completely still. The movie in my mind is stuck on pause, and as a result the words simply will not come.
I slump over to the counter to make a cup of tea, catching sight of my reflection in the shiny chrome kettle. My now permanently tear-damp face is morose and splotchy, long dark blonde hair an unbrushed shredded-wheat tangle, eyebrows verging on eyebrow singular.
I blow the air out of my cheeks. God, I’m like a wet weekend these days, shuffling about the flat, a trail of tear-soaked tissues marking my path.
And then, of course, there’s the rush of shame that inevitably follows the shuffling and the crying; a cooler, bolder, more independent woman would use this heartbreak as a catalyst for better things, an opportunity for growth, a fresh start.
I want to be that woman. I wish I were that woman.
God knows, I’ve tried to be that woman, but I can’t seem to manage it because of, well, my entire personality.
I take a deep breath and try to muster up a little fight in my belly. Some sense of hope or oomph, anything but this pitiful, maudlin inertia I’ve been wading around in for an entire month.
‘Get a grip, Gert,’ I scold my distorted reflection in the kettle. ‘Be stronger! What would a plucky heroine do in this situation? What would Florence Pugh do?’
In response, a fresh round of tears squeeze their way out of my eyes, this time accompanied by a disgusting little bubble of snot at my nostril.
Yep. The leading lady I most definitely am not.