If you’ve been following me on Instagram for the last month or so, you may have heard the news about some of my original books being re-released next month. Of course, that means I’ve been spending a lot of time with the original crew (or the OC of PC as I like to call them). Obviously, my trip down memory lane with these characters has my mind traveling back to the reasons I wrote the stories to begin with.
There are probably two of my characters that really capture a lot of who I am and reveal it in the things they do, the things they say, and the thoughts only the readers are privy to… and Brooke is one of them.
If you’ve been a reader of mine for a while, you might be familiar with how Jayson and Brooke (And She Called Him Romeo) came to be. But something I’ve never talked about in depth was why the story came to be. On the surface, the story could easily be checked off as a popular guy/outsider girl trope of romance, but the truth hits a little deeper and a lot closer to my heart.
I wrote the first version of ASCHR back when I was sixteen years old and a junior in high school. It was a story I never imagined sharing with anyone. As most other teenagers were, I was busy getting lost in the throes of first love… an experience that would end up shaping a lot of my self confidence in not the best of ways at the time.
Brooke’s feelings of disbelief at being seen by a guy like Jayson. Yep, that’s sixteen year old me all over it.
Those rough teen years of first love groomed me to think of myself as the plan B girl, the safety net aka old reliable that was always good for an ego boost.
And the creation of Jayson, was definitely the dream.
Most readers run back to me enthralled that Jayson’s heart is what it is. There’s something special about him being looked at as a typical jock, but then taking away all the ego and having him deal with an unrequited crush on a girl who thinks she’d never be on his radar.
And believe it or not, there’s a lot of me in his character as well.
It’s a story that has so many moving parts to it and yet, when I reread it, I find teenage me in all the cracks and crevices.
That’s also the reason why it’s always my favorite. Yeah, it opened up a whole new world of characters for me. But it did something far more important, it gave me an outlet for every single one of my feelings… and all the dreams of happily-ever-after.
