Who Says You Can't?

And why are you listening to them?

If the answer to those two questions is along the lines of, the police, because I don’t want to go to prison, it’s probably safe to say, keep doing what you are (or are not) doing. But, when it comes to writing, I’ve been reflecting on this a lot.

Over the last couple of months I’ve been working on my revision of Summer in the City, aiming to get it ready for re-publication on 21st May. Initially, I’d intended to do a light pass and tighten up, updating for the new time-frame like I did with A Mistletoe Miracle, enabling me to ask Amazon to add my previous ratings and reviews to the re-published listing.

However, in comparison to A Mistletoe Miracle — which was written over six years — Summer in the City was drafted in about ten weeks and then edited and released during Covid. Somehow, despite that pressure, it was still one of my favourites in terms of the dynamic between the characters and the way the external plot meant lots of fun, interesting scenes for them to develop the relationship through. When I got to the latter half of the book in my revisions, it wasn’t that the end didn’t work, it was just that I could see better ways to show those big third act moments. And then, when I committed to making those changes, it led to me developing some earlier plot points, too. Additional words began to tot up in significant number and I started to get worried about the overall size the manuscript was creeping towards.

Guidance from literary agents and publishers is usually to keep contemporary romance in the 70-90k bracket, but I thought I’d been noticing a trend leaning towards longer novels and a bit of research showed that in 2025 there were more romances leaning closer to 100-120k. Some of this was the result of the popularity of romantasy, but it was contemporary romances too. Curious, I took to Threads to ask if people thought this trend was anything to do with readers who love fan fiction — those can be extremely long! Maybe readers were developing a taste for stories they could sink into?

Overwhelmingly, I received the answer of “no”! Those readers apparently will happily tolerate meandering or repetitiveness* from a fic writer who is not making money from their work and/or possibly not utilising an editor, but what they expect from a professionally published romance novel, is for it to get to the point.

I have to say, while I can understand on one hand, because readers of fan fic are there to spend more time with characters they already know and love, I couldn’t understand why they had such a prescriptive view on how long a romance novel should be. There were accusations of “filler” and things akin to “drama for the sake of drama” - but when you think about the fact that a romance novel is about the development of characters, through the plot, and emotions tend to be dramatic, it’s very hard to pin down what exactly is “necessary”. The journey is the point, and whether that journey engages is subjective partially, but also, to my mind that makes it not an issue of length, but of craft and, perhaps, our preconceptions going in.

We expect romance novels to be around 300 pages, but Ali Hazelwood and Emily Henry regularly put out 400+ page books and they are, obviously, extremely popular! I have never read a book by either that I felt needed to be tied up earlier or had filler. I am there for the yearning, or the complicated emotions the plot is forcing them to feel, or the descriptions of beautiful locations, or interesting STEM politics, and, of course, swoony kisses and spice scenes. To me, a well written book — just like a chapter — is as long as it needs to be. Piranesi is a fantastical book, a genre generally expected to be longer, but it’s only 272 pages.

Emma, you might say kindly, these exceptions are not the rule because they are Emily Henry and Ali Hazelwood and Susanna Clark and people will read anything they write. And that would be fair. But also, when I dug into it further, because the industry is still asking for smaller word counts than these best sellers, it seems the reason the average word count is creeping up is because of the increase in self-published novels (and successful ones being picked up at a later date). Agents and in-house editors can’t enforce a barrier of word-count to a self-published author.

Oh, my brain piped up at this point, you’re self-published now. You don’t have to follow the “rules” if you don’t want to.

What a Eureka! moment. It probably seems obvious, but when you spend some on the internet, it is very easy to feel that the list of things you should and should not do as a writer is never ending and frustratingly contradictory. (Write in first person, no write in third person — don’t have a third act break-ups, but hold on where is all the conflict? And so on, and on, and on). Ultimately, this realisation maybe me stop asking myself whether my book met the standard and instead question: what do I want to do with this story and do I have a good reason why?

Because that is actually the most important thing — if I am going to write, it’s about putting something out there that I care about and that I think is good. At this point in my career, there literally seems to be no other reason to do anything else. The blurred lines of what is “good writing” and what sells can really mess with your head, and as I bring my contemporary romance backlist out again, I’m trying to rediscover the love for both it and writing in general (because creative burn out is real and taking longer to recover from than I imagined).

Bearing all this in mind, I decided not to stress about the book getting too long, I just carried on doing what felt right. And then, the obvious thing to do was to split it in two and publish them close together! I’m adding things that I think are important to these characters’ development and, frankly, because I’m enjoying writing them. My internal editor is warning me not to put scenes in just for the sake of it, so everything is being challenged to show the characters growing and wrestling with their demons, while also, hopefully, making it fun… and that is the best that I can do.

Summer in the City is now the Slow Burn Summer duology, with book one, Grade-A Plot Hole, out on 21st May (as planned and available for pre-order now) and book two, Should Have Seen That Coming, most likely to be out in July!

The Slow Burn Summer Duology

There will be consequences of course. I can no longer port my reviews as originally planned. Many readers might automatically assume it’s too long, or be annoyed at having to read a second book to get to the conclusion of the romance, but the truth is, I could keep it exactly the same as when it was previously published and just as many readers could be unhappy with it. What is more important to me, is it finding the ones who will love the build up of tension and yearning and conflict. The way the characters try and fail and really earn their happy ending. Those are the readers I hope the book finds and with any hope the ones that want to read more of my future work.

A final note that I want to make about all this, is how it’s made me consider the restrictions we sometimes place on ourselves sometimes as creatives. Personally, I like using guidelines to get me started when I’m working on a project, but once things gain momentum and the true themes begin to show themselves, it’s good to feel free to experiment. That is what creativity is all about. I don’t believe all rules are made to be broken — I am firmly in team Romance needs a HEA — but if you start out writing a romance and then find you really want to give it a tragic ending that’s OK. It’s your story. Just don’t try to sell it to someone expecting a HEA!

How rebellious are you in your writing?

*I have never really read fanfic, but I am definitely not suggesting fanfics are meandering and repetitive — this was just what people said to me!