Guest post written by Dead Set On You author Lexi Alexander
Lexi Alexander writes swoony romances packed with big feelings, even bigger banter and a dash of the unexpected. Born in Romania and raised in the Motor City, she loves telling stories about characters who dream big, hustle hard and defy the odds – especially when love is on the line. When she’s not writing, she’s leading a global communications team, cheering from the sidelines of her sons’ sports games, and perfecting her spicy margarita recipe.
About Dead Set On You: A woman wakes up as a spirit in her rival coworker’s apartment in this charming contemporary romance for fans of The Dead Romantics and The Hating Game. Out now! PLUS you can read the first chapter at the end of the guest post!
The pandemic cornered me like a monster and whispered the world’s most unhelpful question: what if you don’t get another shot at this? (“This” being life and my many, many aspirations.)
Up until that moment, writing a novel lived in the same category as learning to ski in your 30s: highly ambitious, considerably terrifying, and always scheduled for “later.” I wasn’t holding back for a specific reason — just the fact that I was the main athlete in the full-contact sport called adulting. Two young boys. A career with deadlines. The kind of everyday inertia that makes a dream wait on the bench because everything else is already on the field.
I’d tried to write a novel once before. It didn’t go well. It clocked in somewhere around 100,000 words and attempted…a lot. So I did what adults do: I shelved it for another day because there were actual priorities and saved it for later. After work slows down. After the next promotion. When the kids wouldn’t need me as much. The reasons stockpiled.
But spoiler-alert: life doesn’t send Outlook invitations for your dreams. (And if it did, I’d probably respond “Tentative.”)
So when, in 2020, this horrible monster asked its question — clearer, louder, like it hadn’t inflicted enough damage: If there wasn’t a next time, would I be okay knowing I never tried again?
The answer was immediate: absolutely not.
And like with all things that are worth chasing, I needed a plan, and I had no idea where to start. I grew up in a house of engineers, not authors, and my friends weren’t writing novels either. That meant I had to get practical about something that didn’t look practical at all. I went hunting for craft anywhere it lived: the Instagram writing community, books on story structure (add Save the Cat Writes Novel to your shopping cart asap), online workshops (The Manuscript Academy), a writing mentorship (PitchWars!), authors who kindly answered my questions (all the poor souls who answered my DMs), and every free resource the internet puts in your pocket. No blueprint, no coach — just stubborn curiosity and whatever I could hunt down with spare cash and Wi-Fi.
And word by word, week by week, blood, sweat, and stubbornness, I stared the monster right back and did the thing. I wrote the book. Not after quitting my job, not with a sabbatical, not in a cabin surrounded by pine trees and a lake (I would have finished much sooner, had that been the case). I wrote it between the edges of night and day, in notepads and writing apps — on New Year’s Eve while my friends were celebrating. I skipped plans, traded nights out for scenes, and wrote whenever there was a tiny window I could pry open.
I did it all during the most challenging stretch of my adult life so far. Navigating a global pandemic, surviving the most toxic job of my career, all while trying to mom and wife and friend along the way. It was not glamorous. It wasn’t restorative. But it was mine.
That energy is the backbone of Dead Set on You. It’s a story about unfinished business, second chances, and fighting so hard for the things that matter. My heroine, Evie, is the sort of person who plans her life with color-coded tabs — until she wakes up as a spirit tethered to Rafael Vela, her former friend turned rival, while her real body sleeps in a hospital bed. If she wants her life back, she has to face everything she postponed. Dreams. Bucket lists. Love. All the quiet priorities that get pushed aside by the loud ones.
The book has everything I love: enemies-to-lovers tension, banter, yearning, stubborn people realizing what matters. But under the chaos, it’s the same question the monster whispered at me: If you don’t get another shot, what will you regret not giving yourself the time to do?
So here’s my unpolished advice from someone still mid-wrestling adulthood: If there’s something you want to make, make it. Not when the calendar cooperates, not when life slows down (it doesn’t). Now — between the seams of everything else.
Chasing this wild dream put me face to face with the biggest truth of all: we only have one life (and it flies by oh-so-fast). So, make the thing that’s yours. Chase it like the monster’s keeping score. Do it with nothing holding you back.
And if you need a push, my Instagram DMs are open.
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