Writing passion
Arizona romance novelist celebrates imperfect love
Readers won’t find a Disney princess in one of Kristen Ashley’s romance novels. The Phoenix-based author is shaking up the way readers think about love with a mission of writing more realistic and modern stories with strong heroines. Since she was 13 years old, Ashley has been devouring romance novels, enchanted by the heroes, the tragedies and the happily-ever-afters. Still, she wanted more from the stories. She wanted reality. She wanted to portray versions of love that were relatable and imperfect. The kind that exists outside of Sleeping Beauty’s castle and inside a studio apartment where a couple bickers about whose turn it is to take out the trash.
“My characters don’t love each other in spite of certain things about each other,” she said. “They love each other for the fullness of who that other person is.”
After years of struggling to land a publishing deal through, she took matters into her own hands and started using Kindle Direct Publishing on Amazon. Since she didn’t stop writing while she was fielding rejections from publishers, she already had about 20 books written.
She started publishing three or four books a month because of the backlog. Now, she’s writtenmore than 60 romance books and sold 3 million. Her work has been translated into 13 languages, and her books have landed on the New York Times best-sellers list many times.
“I celebrate imperfections, she said. “None of my characters are perfect. They don’t say the right thing. They get exhausted and they pick at each other and they bicker.”
Editors in the past have told her to tone a character’s personality down or make her female characters nicer — traits they thought would make the characters more appealing or approachable.
“In writing, you absolutely can say all the right things,” Ashley said, “because you can edit it to death until exactly what you wanted to say came out of your mouth. I don’t want women to feel that, or men to feel that.”
Art imitates life
Those who know her might be able to see the parallels between Ashley’s life and the love stories in her books.
One book is dedicated to her ex-husband, a man who lives in England and remains one of her best friends. Another book features love interests who are in their 40s, an unusual age for typical romance plots.
The women who played significant roles in her life, her mother and grandmother, are who she thinks of when she needs to make a serious decision. Before her mother died, she read the first book in Ashley’s Rock Chick series. It’s the only one of her books her mother got to read.
Similar to real life, she said, it’s the ancillary people outside a romantic relationship that can make a story even stronger.
“I think anybody is not only defined by their actions, but by the people that love them,” Ashley said.
These damsels are not in distress
The romance novel industry, like every industry, could expand its diversity representation in both the published authors and written characters. Exploring more intersections of love is another mission for Ashley.
Some of her books already feature nonwhite characters and LGBTQ characters, as well as heroines who flaunt different body sizes, personalities and careers.
“Not every one of my heroines is a stalwart, strong woman who owns her own business,” she said. “I have heroines who want absolutely nothing more than to be a mom, and that’s absolutely OK. We need to stop thinking, ‘you have to do this or you have to do this to be a woman.’ I want the whole experience.”
Another facet of feminism for Ashley is depicting women characters who take control of their sexuality, a topic that still remains taboo for some women or one that makes them feel ashamed. She said she wants to write “the whole ball of wax,” every aspect of a romantic relationship even if it breaks a norm or two.
The romance industry “has a terrible stigma attached to it,” about its perceived silliness she said, in part because most authors are female. But the thousands of romance novels she has read taught her to be self-sufficient, and she describes herself as a “massive feminist.”
“They’re thought of as cheesy or that the stories aren’t worthwhile because it’s something that a woman is interested in,” she said. “Why is romance not important? I mean romance is one of the most important things that you can do.”