Her First Book

Hoover began writing Slammed when she was 31. It tells the story of an 18-year-old who starts a romantic relationship with her 21-year-old neighbor before they find out (spoiler) that he’s going to be her high-school teacher. “I actually self-published at first because I just didn’t think that I wrote a real book,” Hoover recalled on the Off the Vine podcast. The book gained traction on blogs after its release in early 2012 and made it to the New York Times’ e-book fiction best-seller list. Soon after, Hoover signed with Simon & Schuster imprint Atria Books. By the end of that year, she’d decided to pursue writing full time.