Romance, Apparently.
Updated: 4 days ago
How I Accidentally Wrote a Romance (And It's All Spike's Fault)
For today's episode of #WelcomeToRobinsEnd you’re getting a writing update.
Not because I planned one—but because I’ve been irritated all day.
Pacing. Restless. Thinking about things I didn’t ask to think about.
Men. Banter. Unbuttoned shirts. Emotional nonsense.
And while I was busy being annoyed about that, I suddenly thought:
Oh. Right.
I could actually tell you how I ended up writing romance in the first place.
Because that didn’t happen on purpose either.
So this is a little behind-the-scenes look at my writing process.
How I got here.
How a perfectly reasonable plan did not plan out.
And how romance snuck in when I wasn’t paying attention.
Ready?
Excited?
Let’s go.
How to Not Write a Murder Mystery
When I started writing Blackmore. Pembroke., it was meant to be a procedural.
Because you’re supposed to write what you read, right?
And I read procedural. I love it.
It’s my catnip.
But turns out? Writing a proper mystery requires actual logic. Structure. Planning.
The ability to set clues without immediately forgetting where you put them.
Which—those who know me will confirm—I do not possess.
I tried. Honestly.
I have entire Miro boards of attempted plotting.
Didn’t work.
Then I thought: fine. Dumb it down. Make it a cosy mystery.
Who needs airtight logic when you’ve got quirky villagers and a teapot?
Still didn’t work.
Turns out, I can’t even manage dumbed-down murder.
At that point, I nearly binned the whole thing.
I was lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, angry at my own stupid brain—when it hit me.
The problem wasn’t the plot.
The problem was the vessel.
I was trying to force this story into a shape it was never meant to take.
Because this wasn’t a mystery.
It was a bloody love story.
A love story I had already written in my head a hundred times, even if I refused to call it that.
Let Me Just Back Up Into 1997 Real Quick
Now. Romance? Me?
Nah. I don’t do that.
—Only I do. Obviously.
Just not the "ring in champagne" kind.
Not the "public proposal" kind.
Not the "swoon while a man with an unbuttoned shirt stares into the distance" kind.
I was wired differently.
And there’s a very specific reason my story ended up involving a vampire.
And if you said Edward Cullen just now—I applaud your audacity, but no. Try again.
My romantic imprint was set way earlier.
1997. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 2, Episode 3. School Hard.
Spike enters.
That’s it. That’s the origin story.
Not Angel. Spike.
Always Spike.
The peroxide problem. The coat. The voice. The snark. The pain. The Britishness.
That was my love language.
Buffy The Vampire Slayer. This series rewired my brain in ways I’m still discovering.
I grew up with it. I rewatch it religiously.
There are episodes I love like safe places.
Ask me where I’d want to live in fiction—I’ll say Sunnydale before you finish the question.
And from that came a very specific kind of wiring.
Irritatingly specific.
I don’t respond to roses or rings.
I want banter.
I want references.
I want closeness that builds sideways—
through conversation, rhythm, who gets the last word and who lets it go.
Romance, to me, has always been dialogue.
And what Spike taught me—better than anyone—is that attraction isn’t about perfection.
It’s about tension.
That love isn’t loud. It’s persistent.
That wanting someone can be dangerous, humiliating, funny, and deeply sincere—sometimes all at once.
He taught me banter is intimacy.
That verbal sparring is foreplay.
That choosing to stay—knowing the cost—is hotter than any bouquet could ever be.
When people talk about romance, they usually mean performance.
I mean recognition.
I don’t need men with perfect hair and six-pack abs.
I need men in all black, with voices like the earth is sighing.
Men who play instruments—badly or brilliantly, I don’t care—as long as they understand that music isn’t a hobby, it’s a language.
(And if you’re wondering whether we’re still talking about Spike at this point — or if I’ve quietly wandered off into a Peter Steele appreciation moment—no. We are still very much talking about Spike. Musical episode. Once More With Feeling. Let Me Rest In Peace. "You know, you got a willing slave...". I have never recovered.)
Anyhow.
I fall apart when someone loves the same thing I love.
When we’re obsessed in the same direction.
When we can sit in the same wreckage and not try to fix it for each other.
Right. Enough About Spike. Back to Rupert.
So I was lying there, staring angrily at the ceiling, trying to plot a murder that refused to exist.
And I realised—I don’t need one.
Because Pippa and Rupert were the plot all along.
They were always the story.
I just needed to write it.
Not a case. Not a corpse. Not a twist.
Just—music. Supernatural nonsense. Banter that borders on flirtation and absolutely falls in headfirst.
Two people finding each other not because fate said so, but because they recognised something in the same shared chaos.
And that’s when it clicked.
All that emotional archaeology I just dragged you through?
That wasn’t a tangent. That was the map.
Because I didn’t invent this story.
I’d been circling it for years—I just had to admit what it really was.
Writing Blackmore. Pembroke. was my way of finally putting all that longing on a page.
All the stuff I’ve carried since Spike crashed into the "Welcome to Sunnydale" sign—
shoved into two fictional idiots who think they’re not the main plot.
Turns out? They were always the point.
Cool, Izzy. But What’s the Bloody Book About?
Well. I wrote a love story.
Didn’t mean to. Didn’t set out to.
But that’s what it is.
Not a tidy plot. Not a clever twist.
Just two people, talking. Circling. Matching frequencies.
It’s a story about being met.
In conversation. In taste. In shared obsession.
A story about two people who know that intimacy is built sentence by sentence.
Reference by reference.
Silence by earned silence.
It’s my kind of romance.
Bit awkward.
Very wordy.
I’ve been told my characters talk too much and should probably just make out already. Noted.
But writing it?
Made me ridiculously happy.
Giddy, even.
Should you ever read it—please do picture me giggling at my own dialogue.
Because I did. Repeatedly. With great joy.
Like an absolute menace.
Because sometimes, the best thing you can write—is the one you needed to read all along.