In the romance novelist’s Dream On, Ramona Riley (Berkley, May), an aspiring costume designer agrees to give a movie star a crash course in normalcy to help her prepare for a part.
Dylan is a movie star with famous parents. What drew you to the celebrity romance trope?
I’m getting to the point with my books where I’m like, What have I not done yet? It’s actually not my favorite situation to read; I tend to enjoy characters who more reflect my daily life. But because I hadn’t done it, I was considering celebrity romance and I got the idea for Dylan. She was born out of wondering what it must have been like for Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love’s kid and imagining what kind of person she might be. I was like, I’m going to make her need so much therapy.
How did you create the character of Ramona?
Any time I’m digging into a character, I am always like, Backstory, backstory, backstory, backstory. With Ramona, I wanted someone who worries she’s forgettable. Well, why? Because her mom left when she was young, and she still feels like that little girl coming home to see a note on her bed from the most important person in her life, who abandoned her. And I keep asking why until I’m in the subbasement, as deep as I can go, because that’s what’s going to make that character feel layered and real. I have to understand how they see themselves before I can write someone else who sees them just a little bit differently. Which, to me, is the whole point not only of love and romance, but friendships, too.
Dylan and Ramona’s relationship is complicated by the fact that they’re using each other to achieve their career goals.
I love messy characters—and I’ve been telling people that Dylan Monroe is the messiest character I’ve ever written. I like getting characters in a tangle and understanding that the tangle with each other is really a tangle inside themselves that they need to deal with. I know not everybody’s gonna like the way that plays out in this book. Probably a lot of people are gonna say they could have just had a conversation. Romance authors hear that all the time. But one, that’s not fun, and two, in my opinion, it’s not realistic. These are two people who don’t know how to communicate healthily, and that’s part of the journey.
What’s your approach to writing sex scenes?
In all my books so far, all of the pronouns in the sex scenes are she/hers. So on a logistical level, I’m like, have I said their names enough? Do I understand whose hand this is? I also have to think about what they’re going to do from a character perspective. What are they saying? Do they use toys? What makes sense for who these people are? And then really, it’s just a matter of making it fresh and fun and hot. You’re writing a romance novel; this is the big moment. You’ve got to live up to what people are anticipating.
