Guest post written by Everyone I Kissed Since You Got Famous author Mae Marvel
Mae Marvel is the alias of cowriters Ruthie Knox and Annie Mare, bestselling authors of over a dozen acclaimed romance novels between them. Mae lives with two teenagers, two dogs, one cat, four hermit crabs, and a plethora of snails and fish in a witchy century home in Wisconsin whose extravagant perennial garden gives them something to look forward to in the depths of winter. In addition to romance, they also write mystery novels and cannot promise not to branch into new novelistic territories at a moment’s notice.
Witty, emotional, and steamy, Everyone I Kissed Since You Got Famous (out June 11th 2024) is an unforgettable romantic read for everyone who almost kissed their best friend. And then finally did.
“Guess what?”
These are the first words our character, Wil Greene, speaks to A-list celebrity Katie Price, who’s back in Wil’s hometown for Christmas, standing right in front of her for the first time in more than a decade.
They used to know each other. They grew up in each others’ orbit because their moms are best friends, and senior year of high school flung them into an unexpectedly close friendship for a single glorious year before graduation and divergent future plans sent Wil and Katie to opposite sides of the country. Katie got famous. Wil got stuck.
But still, when Wil approaches Katie at a Christmas party at Katie’s mom’s house, the first words out of her mouth aren’t tentative or polite. Why would they be? The best part of their friendship—the part they leaned into because it felt so good when they were eighteen years old and spent as much time as possible in each other’s company—was that they could say anything to each other.
“Guess what?” Wil asks, and without skipping a beat, Katie sets her platter full of holiday food down on the table in front of her and says, “What? Tell me.”
But what’s new, and different, and catches Wil by surprise, is her reaction. Which is to think, Well, that was hot.
Miscommunication is a beloved romance trope for good reasons. The tension between the reader’s knowledge about the desires of the characters’ hearts and their persistent, horrifying inability to express them is so delicious, we’ve built monuments to it. It elevates the reader to a position of trust—because it is only the reader who knows how much two characters who can’t communicate truly feel for each other in their secret, burning hearts. The reader carries that torch for the characters’ love, seeing it through to the final moment. It’s amazing. It’s hot. It’s everything, and we adore it.
We didn’t actually plan to subvert the miscommunication trope in our Sapphic romance Everyone I Kissed Since You Got Famous. We didn’t even notice we’d done it until early reviewers started mentioning it in their summaries of the book. And mentioning it. And mentioning it.
“These characters knew how to communicate like adults.”
“The communication skills!!! Love a couple that can be open and honest.”
“There’s steam, there’s sweet, and there is HEALTHY COMMUNICATION.”
The marketing team at our publisher shared these reviews with us, and we were all laughing about how maybe our book turned out to feature an anti-miscommunication trope. The Communication Trope: Miscommunication with a Sapphic Twist!
But, more seriously, one of the things we love, love, love, about writing Sapphic romance is that it offers us the opportunity to ask, How might that look different if both characters are queer women? It truly did seem to us that two characters who hadn’t seen each other for many years, but who’d thought of each other and missed each other as they learned and grew and accumulated different experiences of life throughout their twenties, would be characters who would communicate with each other, because the communication they’d shared as teenagers was the one thing they’d figured out how to do that was safe, intimate, and incredibly rewarding. And because they were teenagers when they figured it out—teenagers who are going to push the pleasure button as often as possible—they got lots of practice doing this thing that felt good with each other, which was talking, endlessly, about anything and everything.
They couldn’t know it then, but as grown women, they would learn to identify this eager soul-baring as what it is. Hot.
Hot in whatever way you take hot. Yes, erotically, but maybe also hot as in heat, as in a catalyst for other kinds of intimacy. Because that’s the other thing—queerness recognizes all the kinds of hot, in infinite combinations, and, well, likes to talk about it.
“Both women are strong, powerful in their own ways, and aren’t afraid to articulate their needs! We love to see it!!”
“They are open and honest and that makes them so SO much more interesting. The chemistry is out of this world.”
The story of two characters who won’t stop talking to each other, who reveal more and more of themselves to each other, is not necessarily an instant love story.
Communication alone doesn’t magically produce a happily ever after. But it’s an instant something. It’s a place to start and build from. Wil and Katie have to be changed by what they say to each other and what they say to themselves. They have to explore the difference between intimacy for intimacy’s sake and the kind of connection that lasts a lifetime. They have to risk, they have to lose, they have to be wrong, and then, of course, they have to talk about it.
There hasn’t been anything more magical and wonderful we’ve ever learned from our readers than their discovery of the possibilities of a communication trope. It made us think about other authors, favorites of ours, who’ve grown love between their characters this way—including Charlotte Stein, Mazey Eddings, Rebekah Weatherspoon, Opal Wei, Olivia Dade, Cara Bastone, Ruby Barrett, Rosie Danan, Courtney Milan, Vicki So, so many more—and how hot it is.
And we can’t get enough of it.
