Erin La Rosa is the author of For Butter or Worse, The Big Redhead Book, and Woman Skills. Her latest novel, Plot Twist, releases tomorrow, 11/14! We are so excited to have Erin with us on the blog today to discuss Plot Twist and romance writing! thank you so much for joining us, Erin!
Hi! Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your upcoming novel, Plot Twist?
My name is Erin La Rosa, and I’m an author living in Los Angeles. I love writing about celeb culture (I used to do this for E! and BuzzFeed), and my latest novel, Plot Twist, also takes place in LA and deals a lot with fame. It’s a contemporary romance novel about a romance novelist who has never been in love (very meta!). She’s working on her second book, but having serious writer’s block. And, unfortunately for Sophie (our heroine), a video of her screaming that “love isn’t real!” goes viral. In order to save her career—and hopefully cure her writer’s block—she goes on a quest to revisit her past relationships and discover why she’s never been in love. Along the way, she unexpectedly bonds with her next-door neighbor, Dash, and they find that they accept each other—flaws and all—in a way no one else ever has. This is a rom com for readers who love a friends-to-lovers, cinnamon roll hero story.
What did your journey to publishing look like for your debut novel, For Butter or Worse?
I’d been kicking the idea of For Butter or Worse around for a while in my head, but never had time to write it due to my full-time job (at the time, I worked as a social media manager for Netflix, and worked long hours). So I decided to save up some money and quit my job to pursue writing this book—something in my gut just told me I needed to do this. It took a while to save the money up, but I saved enough, and quit! I started working on For Butter or Worse, and eventually got another full-time role with less hours. Writing a draft of the book took about a year and a half, getting an agent took about two months, and we sold it another two months later. When we sold it, I was working a full-time job, and had a new baby to juggle as well…I don’t know how I found the time for all of these things, except that I had this dream, and took any minute of the day I could to work towards it.
What is your favorite romance trope to write?
I love enemies-to-lovers, mainly because writing banter is one of my favorite things! For Butter or Worse is enemies-to-lovers, and I just adored the barbs they’d throw at each other. I did the same for Plot Twist, but with more of the friendly barbs thrown in.
What is your favorite and least favorite aspect of traditional publishing?
My favorite aspect of working with Canary Street Press (my publisher) is how collaborative I get to be with their in-house team. Writing can be so solitary, so being able to bounce ideas around with my publicist, or marketing point, is so fun for me. Maybe the hardest part of the publishing process is just how long it takes to get the book on the shelves—it’s not the instant gratification of publishing an article online!
What is the most useful piece of writing advice you’ve ever gotten?
I got a masters in writing from the University of Southern California, and took a class with a fantastic memoirist named Mark Richard. He told us that the writers he knew who were successful weren’t necessarily the most talented, but they just kept trying and never gave up. I’ve kept that in my mind ever since — writing really is so much about perseverance, because you’ll hear “no” a lot, and you just have to keep going!
Do you have any exciting new writing projects on the horizon you can tell us a little bit about?
I am currently working on a draft of my third book, called Change Your Tune, and it will be a speculative fiction romance, about a woman who discovers that her CD player can transport her back to her teenage years. It’s very much like 13 Going on 30 meets Sliding Doors.
Can you provide links to any websites or social channels you’d like readers to follow?
Here’s my IG and TikTok to follow:
https://www.instagram.com/erinlarosalit/
https://www.tiktok.com/@erinlarosawrites
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