Rosie Danan’s latest novel may be entitled ‘Do Your Worst,’ but the swoon-worthy supernatural romance is the author at her very best.

Photo by Sylvie Rosokoff

The following interview contains minor spoilers for ‘Do Your Worst.’

You'll never forget your first… romance book, that is. And I, for one, believe this to be true. It was a sunny day in Los Angeles when my friend climbed into my small silver hatchback for our semi-regular coffee run to the small take-out window that had opened a few minutes from her house as a result of the lessening COVID-19 restrictions. "I have something for you," she squealed, thrusting a shiny pink book into my hands. "If you thought Bridgerton was spicy, just wait. I need you to start this immediately." The novel she had just bestowed upon me was Rosie Danan's The Roommate, and it quite literally changed my life forever. While it is miles and not a pandemic that now separates us, my friends and I still pour over romance novels, either in tandem or sequentially, as we did with Rosie's debut. Yet, no matter how many books we read together, there will always be an extra layer of magic that comes along with a story penned by Danan. And that layer is even more impactful in her most recent release.

Do Your Worst is a cozy supernatural romance spurred on through a pesky curse and a well-constructed enemies-to-lovers trope. Riley Rhodes is a professional curse breaker who finds herself at odds with Clark Edgeware, the disgraced architect with whom she has to share custody of an infamous Scottish castle. A partnership that wouldn't prove so difficult had he not been the handsome stranger who had kissed her one night and tried to get her fired the following morning. As an author, Rosie is known for crafting love stories that are equal parts heartwarming, humorous, and steamy. Don't be surprised if you find yourself blushing and then crying and then laughing within the span of a few pages. Whether consciously or unconsciously, Danan's characters' personal arcs often guide her readers toward life lessons and explore emotional truths in gentle and relatable ways. Do Your Worst is no exception. In fact, it is a masterclass in thoughtful, inspiring and well-rounded romance that still packs that one-two punch of heat and heart.

Prior to departing for her book tour, Rosie Danan spent some time with The FMC discussing her new novel, her lifelong admiration of strong yet vulnerable women, what she loves about writing romance, and more.

The biggest congratulations ever on Do Your Worst. I am genuinely obsessed with it. I laughed. I cried. I gasped. I giggled. I just had the best time reading it. I’m so curious about the writing process for this book. With how integral the curse and its backstory are to the final piece, how did you come up with both sides or which came first?

I was really excited about diving into a slightly paranormal version of romantic storytelling after doing a couple of contemporaries. I very naively underestimated how challenging the world-building would be and that I would need to create a magic system. For Do Your Worst, I had to not only create a curse, but I had to figure out how that curse would then be broken. To your point of how intertwined that is in the main action of the plot, it required a lot of strategy and refinement throughout the writing process. I'm very much someone who is creating a plot and magic that is in service of the romance. So, when it came time to create a curse, without getting too much into spoilers for anyone who may not have read the book yet, I think you can really see my romance reading heart in the origin of the way the curse is developed.

Oh, definitely.

It was really fun to come up with. I was actually living in London at that time, so it was quite easy to go to the Scottish Highlands, where the story is set and do some research on fairy lore and things like that.

That sounds so fun!

It was some of the most fun research I've ever done for a book. I got to listen to local storytellers and visit fairy sites and things like that. It was an adventure for me as part of the writing process.

I'm in London right now. That seems like such a magical thing to do, especially after reading Do Your Worst.

I highly recommend it. Plus, it’s a pretty easy trip from there.

When you just came up with the general idea for the book, did you know you wanted the curse to be as intertwined with the contemporary plot?

Yes, I definitely did. Because, again, my writing is fueled by my reader preferences. At the end of the day, you can't control how anyone responds to a book except yourself. So, I'm always trying to please myself as a reader. [Laughter] I do like mystery or action/adventure, even when it comes to movies, but I'm really there for romance.

I 100% can relate to that. [Laughter]

When you’re writing a romance novel, you're already juggling a lot of narrative in the sense that you typically have at least two romantic partners who you want to have fully developed character journeys individually as well as together. That's already a fair amount of page time that you're going to need to devote space to. When introducing a mystery element to that equation, I didn't want that to feel like another brick just getting stacked on. I wanted it to fuel those core threads that were already essential to developing the narrative.

This book, while it has a similar tone to your last two, is very different from The Roommate and The Intimacy Experiment. Did you find that a freeing prospect or a terrifying one?

It's so interesting because they don't feel that different to me as the writer because the magical elements are quite light. It still has the forced proximity. There is opposites attract. There’s the high heat/slow burn. I look at the story, and I see a lot of consistency and hallmarks of who I am as a writer. That said, I hear from readers like, “Oh, this felt like a big departure,” or “it felt different.” So, I recognize that it must feel that way from the other side. But, to answer your question, it was intimidating to try something this different in terms of world-building. As I said, I felt like I really had to study and uplevel my craft because it was not something that was as pronounced in my contemporaries. I have so much respect for mystery writers. That stuff is so hard. Plus, I didn’t want to feel like the romance was suffering as a result of spending so much time, energy and words on the supernatural part of it. It felt almost like training for a marathon.

[Laughter]

Some of the work is hard, But then when you finally accomplish it, you feel so much stronger. As a writer, I feel like I am more capable of tackling other things. I really needed to build these muscles of world-building. Even if I decide to write contemporaries or other subgenres of romance in the future, I will rely on a lot of stuff that I learned during this process.

Speaking of those kinds of things, how do you think you have grown most as a writer since your debut?

Oh, gosh. What a good question. It’s hard because every book is so different. One of the things I've learned as a writer is that progress is not linear in any way. I want it to be linear. I'm someone who is geared towards efficiency and process, but things that work in one book aren't guaranteed to work again. That is really frustrating. I'll tell you something I’m proud of from what I'm working on right now. It's not as much a part of Do Your Worst, though. Do Your Worst is a really close focus on the couple. There aren’t many secondary characters in that narrative. I think part of that was probably because I was so focused, again, on the magic systems and making sure that those had enough page time. I've always had quite intimate casts because I'm a little bit intimidated by trying to manage so many new characters and have them feel like they're not one-dimensional and only there to advise the hero or heroine. Changing that is something that I'm consciously digging into right now, which hopefully everyone will see in the fourth book.

That's exciting! I always like big ensemble casts in books. Something to look forward to. Where did you find inspiration for this particular story?

So many different places. One of my favorite things to do is draw out a recipe for each book. It's a part of my planning process for new books, but I also find I do it in reflection once the book is finished. So I’ll basically be like, “I can see there's a dash of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and there's a cup of The Mummy.” Growing up, I loved the '90s/early 2000s Paranormal programming. I could go on and on. There was Charmed. There was Xena Warrior Princess. Those shows consistently had these really strong female protagonists who were challenging male-dominated hero roles while being both vulnerable and strong. That was really appealing to me growing up. I also really liked that–especially in something like Buffy the Vampire Slayer– she is balancing these supernatural challenges but also just being a human in the world. You know? She's going to prom, and she has to get a fast food job because saving the world doesn't pay. [Laughter] I think you can see a lot of those influences in Do Your Worst.

Listen. I love Clark. I do. He had moments where I was like, “Okay, sir, you have my attention.” But I really want to talk about Riley. I think she is such a beautifully written character. Like your influences, she’s incredibly brave but also very vulnerable, which I think is a rare combination to find in books. How did she come into being in your brain?

I would say Riley was slower to emerge than Clark. I think that’s partially because I probably identify with Clark more in the sense of his family pressure and his drive to succeed academically. Riley's bravery, in particular, is probably more aspirational for me than it is relatable because I think she has a lot of gumption. Going and doing something that there's no reference for is hard. There's not a curse breaker outside of her grandmother that she can really model herself after. Plus, nobody really believes in her, but she decides she’s still going to believe in herself. I think sometimes I write the story I need to read to coax myself in a certain direction. In Do Your Worst, a little bit of that is in Riley's character.

I think that’s a wonderful way to create.

But at the same time, Riley is a mess. However, in some ways, I also appreciate that because I'm sort of afraid of being outwardly messy. It's more of an inward mess. [Laughter] Riley will just try stuff, and she sometimes gets hurt, but she's comfortable with that. She knows she can handle that and recover from it, and she's very resilient. With respect to her and Clark, their vulnerabilities complement one another. For example, one of the ways they connect is through him wanting her to take more care of herself. He admires her bravery, and she saves his butt a couple of times, but he still wants to make sure she’s doing what she does as safely as possible. To me, that's what romance is in a lot of ways: taking care of each other.

I agree. Not to sound too much like Riley, but I have always said that ‘books are magic.” They find you when you need them most. For me, Do Your Worst was one of those. My friends and I have joked since this book was announced that it had a target audience of one: me. But then, when I read it, I was shocked to find that not only did I really empathize with Riley’s emotional journey, but we also have weirdly similar surface-level backgrounds just in that I was born in West Virginia, and my grandfather worked in the coal mines.

No way!

Do you have any books that hold that kind of magic for you?

One that comes immediately to mind is Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine. It has always been deeply personal to me. I read it when I was growing up, so I was closer in age to the character, who is maybe 15 or 16. That heroine also has a lot of bravery in the face of isolation, like Riley, and external circumstances that feel really stacked against her. You have a lot of demographic details that align, whereas Ella Enchanted is a fairy tale. But I just think something about her personality and her bravery and tenderheartedness spoke to me.

I love that book and the movie. It’s a classic. One of the things I love about romance novels is that they can often point out profound truths about the human experience in a very gentle way. There were a couple of places in this book where I had to stop and just sit with things that you had written because they really resonated with me. Did you have a message or a lesson you were trying to get across at all with Do Your Worst?

That’s a good question. I do tend to go in with a theme that I'm exploring. The Roommate, my first book, was about shedding shame. The Intimacy Experiment was about the intersection of identities. This one–I don't know if this is as overt for other people necessarily–but my intent was to make it about how our work does or does not define us. You can kind of see both of the characters struggling with that in different ways. I think a lot of times, things that I'm processing while I'm writing a book will end up in the book because a lot of writing is processing. Even when we're storytelling for the goal of entertainment, I still find so much that I learn about myself comes from telling these other people's stories.

I’ve always thought that no matter who the author is, if that person is working through something while they're writing their book, that’s going to bleed its way into the story a little bit. I saw your Instagram post about Olivia Waite’s Do Your Worst review right after I had finished the novel. Your caption about romance novelists knowing what it's like to have their work diminished and mocked seemed very parallel with Riley’s struggles. Did you realize that as you were working on this book?

I would not say that I was conscious of it in that way. I was very conscious of the way that romance novelists are mocked and degraded when I was working on The Roommate. There is definitely a whole parallel between the adult entertainment industry and romance, where people who feel shame about their own identity or preferences project that outwardly and try to shame others. I've written a fair amount of outcasts in different ways. Clara, my first protagonist from The Roommate, is a blueblood outcast. Naomi is more of an academic outcast when she's trying to transition into teaching in in-person environments. Riley is a supernatural outcast. I think that recurring theme in my books is, again, not necessarily something I'm doing consciously, but probably is more of a subconscious reflection of that ongoing stigma that I do feel as I'm publishing these books.

In that case, do you find writing therapeutic?

For sure! I love that one of the inherent messages of romance as a genre is that everyone is deserving of love and acceptance. Writing romance novels is something that scares me in a really positive way. [Laughter] This is my third book, and I still get anxiety or, as I said in the Instagram post, still get this feeling of, ‘Oh, should I not be doing this? Is this not acceptable? Is this not polite? Is this whatever word you want to use?’ But, a really good friend of mine said to me when I was sharing some of these feelings, “What did you do wrong? If you can tell me one thing that you did wrong in writing this book, I'll let you beat yourself up.” I wasn't able to do that at the moment because I am really proud of these books.

As you should be. I love them. I have many friends who love them, and we are obviously not alone. Now that Do Your Worst is about to hit shelves. How do you feel?

It's tricky. With this book, the launch is different specifically because my first two books came out during the core of a pandemic when you couldn't do events. Also, I was living in London. So, it was all removed, in the sense that the books would come out, and maybe I would see some social media posts or something, but I wasn't confronted with the reality of it in stores or anything. Whereas for this one, I'm doing my first headliner events. It is really exciting, but it's also really scary because you inherently have this fear of no one showing up. [Laughter]

I promise people will be there.

Thank you. I will say I have a new kind of anxiety for this book. The publisher sends you finished copies of the book almost a month in advance just because of the printing schedule. I have the box downstairs. It’s marked ‘Do Your Worst from Penguin Random House.’ It's been there for about three weeks. [Laughter] It's funny. I'll like walk past it, and I'll be like, “Oh, you know, I should shower.” Or other random excuses because I'm nervous. But having conversations like this is really helpful because I get to hear from someone who enjoyed the book, and I also get to remember the things that I love about it. So I very much appreciate you.

Oh good! That makes me happy. I really like talking to authors. These conversations are so fun for me. So, thank you for saying that. You should definitely open the box.

I will after this.

I have to tell you, my friends and I have literally been counting down the days until this release. We read The Roommate in 2021, and it was the first spicy romance any of us had ever read. We passed one copy around and had a text chain with whoever had read it before. It was absolutely ridiculous, but also such a fond memory. That book opened our eyes to this entire genre, and now we’re all in love. But, I have yet to find a line that makes me blush like “Josh shook out his neck and shoulders, like a swimmer preparing to dive before a race.” It really endeared me to him.

[Laughter]

Since your specific smut will always hold a special place in our hearts, I was wondering which of the spicy scenes in Do Your Worst is your favorite, or you are proudest of? You can just give a simple name, and people can come back to this after they read to figure out which one you mean.

It's definitely the first one. Enemies-to-lovers is a very beloved trope. One of the things that I really appreciate about it is that, ideally, you have a lot of tension to work with. The more energy you can build up in the animosity and fighting within the narrative, the more payoff you can get in your first spicy scenes. So that first one was really fun to write. It was something that came about in a pretty early draft, and a lot of the rest of the book shifted around it. That was sort of like a pillar in the story.

One thing that I think you did really well in this book is the contemporary enemies-to-lovers. It’s so hard to really pull off, but you gave them good reasons to hate each other. I really admired it.

Thank you. I appreciate that.

Lastly, on a much more PG note, since this is The FMC, which classic female main character archetype do you relate to the most?

Probably, The Bitch. [Laughter] I think there are pieces of some of the others. Like I could have made a case for The Nerd or The Survivor. But I think, especially where my life intersects with the characters that I'm trying to create, that not worrying too much about being palatable to other people really speaks to me. Those types of women are always my favorite characters in other narratives. Kat from 10 Things I Hate About You, which is based on Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, was very formative for my personality.