Jessica Martin | Author

Romance writers are drowning in rules. Some of them are useful. Some of them are fine in theory and disastrous in practice. And some of them sound smart enough that people repeat them without ever stopping to ask whether they’re actually helping the story on the page. I’ve learned—mostly the hard way—that writing gets worse…

When I started drafting what I thought was my first romance novel, I truly believed I had everything under control. I had a strong outline, a clear plan, and a story I was excited to tell. I followed that outline scene by scene, and for a while, everything seemed perfectly aligned with the vision in…

Every writer has a few books that quietly carve their fingerprints into your creative DNA. You don’t always realize it at the time, you just finish a book, exhale, and think that did something to me. And then years later, you’re writing your own stories and see the echo of that line, that dynamic, that…

Some people pretend they’re too sophisticated for certain romance tropes.I am not one of those people. I am proudly unhinged about the tropes I love, and today we’re talking about the ones I refuse to apologize for, even when they’re dramatic, chaotic, or blatantly unrealistic. (Especially when they’re unrealistic. Let me have my fun.) I’m…

Or: Why my caffeine tolerance is now spiritually concerning. This month, I discovered something important about myself: I am not—absolutely not—a chill writer. Not even on my best day. I joined Novel November with the goal of writing 50,000 words, and instead of writing 50,000 words, I’ve actually written 85,243. Yes, really. No, I don’t…