In Connor’s debut, Unromance (Forever, Jan.), a frequently heartbroken TV star asks a cynical romance writer to cure him of his hopeless romanticism by acting out classic rom-com scenarios.
How did you land on this premise?
I made a list of all my favorite rom-com elements—because I’m a very type A personality—and thought, “could I possibly fit all of these things into one book?” To me, the natural answer was to have the characters do them all on purpose. But then the question was, well, who would do that? I knew it had to be someone who had previous knowledge of romance tropes, so an author and an actor made sense. And then Sawyer and Mason just kind of walked into my head and it took off from there.
What is it that drew you to the genre?
I’ve always loved rom-coms. They’re just so fun and such a source of joy. But I also think that romance is such a great vehicle to explore heavier topics with the comfort of knowing that, in the end, it’s going to be okay—which I think is what everyone wants to hear: we’re going to be okay.
How did you balance the heart, the heat, and the humor?
It’s such a human experience to want love. I wanted to put these two people on a journey of learning to ask for what they want and chase after it. Sawyer is obviously carrying around a lot of baggage from her previous relationship and has kind of cut herself off from the world because she’s trying to protect herself. And then you have Mason, who’s so desperately looking for love, which I thought was a fun characteristic to give a male character, as we don’t get to see that very often. So that’s the heart.
And then, I always wanted to write a funny couple because my husband’s and my love language is definitely humor. The humor helps ground some of the ridiculousness of acting out tropes and shows why these two are so suited for each other. That way, when they have that big third-act conflict, you’re still rooting for them because you’ve seen how well they complement each other and you actually believe that they’ll make it work after the final page.
Tell me more about Mason.
He’s a hopeless romantic, which is something we don’t get to see very often. Usually male characters are tortured or broody or cut off. So I thought it was fun to have the man be the one that wanted love. He’s actively dating and actively looking and even after heartbreak, he’s still optimistic
about love.
And then Sawyer’s the opposite.
I really wanted to write a female character whose entire identity was not about falling in love, because historically we’ve had a lot of that, where the female character’s plot just gets reduced to being married off. At the same time, I wanted to make Mason the perfect person to teach her how to reopen herself back up to the world and love again.
