On Being Unique
My debut fantasy novel HEARTS FORGED IN DRAGON FIRE is set in a world where magic is an accepted fact of life, some family heirlooms come with an enchantment attached, and dragons lurk in all corners of the globe. Developing the world was one of my favorite parts of the writing process, but as I dove… Read More
An Unexpected London
by Hayden Stone It started with throwing imaginary chickens out of the house. The reason? Bad chicken behaviour, I told my mom, as a veteran two-year-old, wise in the way of imaginary chickens. Soon after that, I wouldn’t stop telling stories about horses. At my core, I remain a storyteller. To be honest, I have… Read More
Writing a Sweet Contemporary Romance Means Taking No Emotional Shortcuts
What is it that makes you as a writer decide to go in a new direction? What makes you pivot and think, “Hey, I could do that, actually. Maybe I should think about how?” That was the creative case with His Holiday Crush for me. While I love writing romance, sweet contemporary romance has never… Read More
Nadia Comaneci, Bart Conner, and Me by Shae Connor
One of the reasons I wrote Rough and Tumble was because I’m a gymnastics fan. When I started thinking about doing a college sports romance series, gymnastics was the sport on the top of my list. I had to do some research about collegiate gymnastics, but for the sport itself, I just had to go… Read More
Building Families
In my new release Most Ardently, an LGBT+ retelling of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, our story centers on the Benitez family – a working-class, close-knit bunch that often drive each other completely insane. One of my main struggles while writing was keeping them recognizable as a modern-day version of the Bennet family, while still… Read More