Culture Cabinet

One of the most exciting parts of going to the bookstore is stumbling upon a new author, sometimes more literally. Culture Cabinet editor Lex Williams recently met new author Roxy Blue at her local Barnes and Noble where she was signing copies of her new book, Fiona’s Fury. Roxy kindly agreed to chat with me about publishing her first book, her writing process, and her plans for the rest of the Finding Love trilogy.

Roxy, who lives in Asheville, had a career as a dancer. However, a rare form of arthritis necessitated a change, which led her to pursue her dreams of writing. Roxy had enjoyed creative writing throughout school, stating, “I am fortunate to say that my teachers always picked me out and said, ‘You’re going to write one day.’” But she’d always planned to write a memoir.

“When I was growing up, I felt like I had so much to say about my childhood because I was just one of those people who has a lot of really visual memories. I just wanted to capture everything in a memoir,” she explains. It wasn’t until later in life when she was doing copywriting work that an ad on Upmarket sparked the idea of writing a novel. She decided not to pursue the opening she saw for a ghostwriter for romance novels, but rather to write her own stories.

“It got me looking at writing romance, and when I found out that you could successfully self-publish in that genre, I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, I want to do this,’” she says. “I just sat down and wrote my first book.” She admits that it took her by surprise how easy it was to write her first novel. Perhaps that’s because her characters often come to her already somewhat formed.

As for her main character Fiona, “She kind of came way out of left field,” Roxy explains. “She manifested from a New Age author who I’ve met just a couple of times. That woman is so powerful, her presence is so bold and strong, and you just don’t forget meeting her.” It’s Fiona’s general aura and not her story that’s inspired by her, but Roxy says, “I think that if she and Fiona met, they would be best friends.”

Roxy didn’t consider Fiona to be very similar to her, but friends who read the book thought differently. It made Roxy realize that there is perhaps more of her in Fiona than she’d thought. She elaborates, “I do describe her as having a panic attack a couple of times in the book, and unfortunately, that is narrated from firsthand experience.” She also relates to her “snarky humor” and the frustration that Fiona feels from things going wrong in her daily life.

When asked about her writing process, Roxy says that she works from home and has “various places that I call my office. I have this portable desk thing that I put my laptop on and move it around the apartment.” She usually writes at night, as she’s definitely not a morning person.

Roxy anticipates my next question and says, “I am a total panster.” (Pantser versus plotter has become a short-hand for whether a writer plans out their work ahead of time or not.) She doesn’t know the plot of her books going in or even “what I’m going to write in any session when I sit down.” She typically starts with a main character and love interest and sees where they take her.

When writing Fiona’s Fury, she says, “By the end of my writing sessions several times, I was just absolutely shocked because I did not mean to write a romantic suspense. I was not expecting all this kind of killer-thriller stuff to come out in Fiona’s Fury, but it did.” In fact, the current popularity of romantic suspense novels is why she chose to publish Fiona’s Fury ahead of the first book she wrote, Some Kind of Angel. The two books, plus the forthcoming A Letter to Elise, make up the “Finding Love Again” trilogy.

Some Kind of Angel focuses on Maxine, who works in the floral shop owned by Fiona. Chronologically, it comes before Fiona’s Fury, but Roxy “thought that [Fiona’s Fury] probably appeals to a broader audience than just a contemporary romance.” Her hope is that eventually, when all the books are published, people will read them in the order she wrote them.

The third book, A Letter to Elise, is unique in that it offers three points of view, allowing us to hear the story from the heroine and her two love interests. Elise, whom readers will have met before as Maxine’s best friend, has a love interest who isn’t likable. Roxy says, “It’s interesting to see, Elise’s perspective on him is that she’s just gaga over him. But when you hear his internal monologue, you find out that he’s quite warped.”

The three POV format came about somewhat accidentally, because of the intrigue of this character. She says, “When I sat down, I found him so fascinated that I started writing that character first, and I found that I was writing it in first person. And so then I was like, ‘Well, geez, I wasn’t really planning to write his point of view into this, but that’s what I’m doing.’ And then you had to get Elise’s point of view, and you had to get the other guy’s point of view. So it just ended up triple point of view.”

In contrast, Some Kind of Angel is told in one first-person point of view, from the character of Maxine. Roxy explains, “I think that is because Maxine as a character basically is reflective of me and again, it’s fiction, but Some Kind of Angel very much reflects a relationship that I’ve had, and my inner thoughts.”

Since written multiple books with characters who work in a floral shop, I had to ask: does Roxy love flowers? She reveals that while she loves making arrangements herself, she did some research to prepare for writing Some Kind of Angel. She says, “I love to go to the store and get a big, cheap $10 spray of flowers and then cut it and arrange it and get it in the right shape and get all the sizes, right? So it was really a fun fantasy for me to write a character who works in the floral shop, because it’s like, ‘Ooh, I get to kind of experience this while I’m writing it.’”

And if she was going to put together a bouquet to represent Fiona as a character, what flower would she include? “I kind of want to say Tiger Lilies,” she muses. “You know, she has that sharp, slightly jagged, and slightly unconventional beauty through her personality. Like you don’t think of Tiger Lilies in a bouquet, but they are beautiful.”

It’s a thoughtful and touching answer, not least because it seems like a bit of an unknowing metaphor for Roxy’s new career as a romance novelist. It might not be the dance she previously pursued, or the memoirs she expected to write, but she’s finding her unique voice.

You can find out more about Roxy Blue and her books on her website.