The Love Story You Can Actually Go Get

On romance, soul attraction, and why the friendship is the love story in Where the Dust Still Glows

We treat romance as though it's the highest form of love, and I think that's wrong.

I love friendship love stories almost more than romantic ones, because I think friendships get to go a little deeper. And I want to talk about why — but I'm going to get there by way of a complaint about romance novels that is not actually a complaint about romance novels.

First, though, some good news.

The reviews started coming in

Where the Dust Still Glows released last week and the reviews are good, which I'm thrilled about.

Amy said the world building was done well — thank you, I was worried about exactly that — and that the characters were interesting.

kixfan called it a great start to a new fantasy trilogy and said she's looking forward to book two. Somebody is already excited about book two. I cannot tell you what that does for a writer.

And mark earls found it in his social feeds. Mark, you are officially the second person to find me on social media. Aletia is the first. I'm not good at social media, so thank you for finding me anyway.

Then he read my author bio, found it funny, and bought the book because of the bio. Then finished it at 3am. Thirty-nine books in, and the thing that closed the sale was me being a smartass about my dating history. I think finishing at 3am is a testimonial all by itself.

(And no — you don't need to read anything first. It sits in the Whiskeyverse but it's a very loose fit. Very loose. You'll be fine. Start here.)

Okay. Back on topic.

Romance is not the problem

There's a huge industry in romance and there are real reasons for that, none of which cheapen it. I am one hundred percent not saying romance is bad. I love romance.

Reading those books, watching those movies and shows, listening to the audiobooks — in my headphones, because on speaker it gets awkward — releases hormones we genuinely need. It makes us happy, and it does more than that. It helps the body make us happy. All we have to do is ingest the story in whatever form works for us.

And romance has a physical component. There's lust, there's chemistry, there's a chemical reaction happening. Even when it isn't getting raunchy, there's still that physical thing — seeing someone across a room and feeling warm, or chosen, or connected. When we read it, our minds build that connection and let us experience it ourselves.

That's a large part of why we love it and why we keep going back.

Here's what I struggle with

The expectation.

What I want while I'm reading — what I think would complete me — is not something I can actually get. Because I live in a world with real people.

Look. I am not saying my husband is a terrible romantic partner. He's not very romantic. I'm not very romantic either, and it's been a long time since we dated each other, which might actually be an interesting thing to fix.

But the aspects I connect with in those books aren't things I have, or things I can obtain as this beautiful shiny person in the real world. So I get euphoria while I'm reading. I close the book feeling good. Then I walk into a room of reality and get this feeling of disappointment — when there is nothing in my actual life to be disappointed in. I've built a great life.

It's a strange thing to notice happening inside yourself.

And then, being me, I went looking for it in other people. I scrolled through what readers were saying about certain books, listened to them rave about how excited a book made them feel — and then I went and looked at their own profiles. At what they were sharing, and how they were talking about their lives.

What they felt from the book wasn't converting.

I wouldn't call that a crusade. (ADHD hyperfixation? Maybe. Crusade, no.) But it did send me looking for something deeper. Something I could carry with me. Something with a semblance of reality — a value that still matters when I put the book down, and that I can actually invest in and obtain in the real world.

I think that's friendship.

Why I think friendship carries more weight

Menopause.

That's the short answer, and I'm going to give you the long one, because this is something I'm actively living through and nobody talks about it enough to be useful.

My body is handling and processing things differently. It's also controlling how I react to people, and altering my personality.

Now: when you're in a relationship that overvalues the physical connection between you, and that physical connection breaks for whatever reason — it doesn't have to be dramatic. Menopause. A car accident. An allergic reaction. The body is enormously complex, and traumatic experience changes how it behaves. When that connection breaks, what's left?

Basing your emotional investment in another person on how your body reacts to that person is setting yourself up for disappointment.

Not failure. Failure isn't a bad thing — my mother hammered into me that failure was something to fear, and it's taken me a long time to turn that around and actually look forward to failing. Failing in a way I can come back from and find a solution to. That's how you grow.

But for a while there, it felt like my body was the point of failure.

And let me say this plainly, because it isn't said enough: your body can take you to some pretty low depths, and going in and getting labs done is crucially important. We don't talk about that, which I think is genuinely silly.

So when your body has taken the wheel and it's making it hard to build the connection you've been reading about — when you think that's what I need, that's what I want, I want to be swept off my feet, and this person isn't making it happen — what that tells me is that more had been invested in the physical connection than in the friendship.

Because the friendship portion survives. Most of the time.

(Most of the time. When a personality changes severely, even friendship is hard to hold.)

Soul attraction

That's why I love friendship arcs. You can run them through the extremes.

Friendships break and come back and break and come back. And the part I love most is why they come back. It isn't physical attraction.

It's soul attraction.

These two people just feel good together. That's it. And I think it's wildly underrated and undervalued — not only in fiction, not only in the books and movies we take in, but in society.

Although I'm seeing it come back. There's a real return to building groups of friends. Communities. Covens, if you like. Places where people get together and actually connect and actually bond. I am loving that.

Getting to experience it through this book was a lot of fun.

I tried to write the romance. I couldn't.

Originally I was going to focus on the romance, mostly because I wanted this book to be marketable, and romance sells.

Having just read everything above, you've probably worked out that this soul was having a very hard time writing romance.

So the story this soul actually needed was about two people who kept getting pulled apart and reset, and who still found ways back to each other.

And that mattered to me because it really does feel like my body is going through a reset. It isn't just my gut. It isn't just my personality. It's how things are getting stored in my head. It's whether I can hide or not hide my reactions to other people.

The way I got to this point is not the way I'm going to move forward. Because of the reset happening in my totality.

Using Lixiss and Yade to carry that — two programs, with someone actively reprogramming them — was fascinating to write. Because we can shift our own programming a little. Diet, exercise, therapy, whatever. We have some control. But we have to make the conscious decision to change our programming, especially when the thing we want isn't happening naturally.

Can we reprogram ourselves? That's not really what went into this book. That's what I want to push into book two.

What I needed to know here was this: as I'm being reset, as all of this changes, do I still have the capacity to reconnect with the friends and family I used to resonate with? And how does that change?

Some of that thought experiment went into shaping these two.

Although I should be honest about my method, because not every author does this scientifically and I certainly didn't. I'm a connection writer. I sat there with my heart bleeding and cried at the heavens that I needed a story my soul could sing to.

This is what came of it. I'm rereading it right now, purely for pleasure, and it's really good.

Questions Readers Ask Me About This

Is Where the Dust Still Glows a romance?

No. The central relationship is a friendship between two beings who have been erased 311 times and found each other 310 of them. If you came for a romance you'll be disappointed, and I'd rather tell you now.

What do you mean by "soul attraction"?

The reason friendships come back after they break. It isn't chemistry and it isn't physical. Two people just feel good together, and that pull survives things that physical attraction doesn't — including your body changing on you.

Do I need to read your other books first?

Nope. It sits in the Whiskeyverse but the fit is loose. Start here.

Is it in Kindle Unlimited?

Yes. It's on Amazon and currently in KU, so a subscription covers it.

Will book two deal with the reprogramming question?

That's the plan. This book asks whether the bond survives the reset. Book two gets to ask whether we can reset ourselves on purpose.

Where the Dust Still Glows is out now on Amazon and free in Kindle Unlimited.

When you're done, leave a review and let me know how it went. Two sentences does more for this book than anything I could buy.

Happy reading. 🦙