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Credit: Irvin Rivera<\/p>\nFullerton-based romance author Melissa Whitney\u2019s sixth novel \u201cBook Boyfriends\u201d is a nostalgic and whimsical comedy.<\/p>\n
Credit: Irvin Rivera<\/p>\n
When she isn\u2019t working at her full-time job in health care, Whitney spends her time diving into the world of whatever book she\u2019s currently writing. The author and disability advocate has been publishing novels for nearly two years and has already come out with seven books (the latest of which, released in November, is the third in her \u201cHome\u201d series). Each story she crafts is steamy yet heartwarming, and explores themes of mental health and disability. \u201cBook Boyfriends\u201d is a wild journey that blurs the lines between reality and the fantastical as the main character tries desperately to find her happily ever after.<\/p>\n
Your books explore themes of disability and trauma. What inspired that?
\u201cI\u2019m legally blind. I grew up as a disabled kid, so there\u2019s a level of trauma and grief with that in a sense of never quite fitting in. There\u2019s always a sense of wanting to be seen and wanting to see stories that deal with disability, deal with trauma, and also deal with mental health and disability in a non-traumatic way but in a way that celebrates disabled joy. That was really important to me to have stories that had (disability) be a part of the story, but not have that be the focus.\u201d<\/p>\n
What is \u201cBook Boyfriends\u201d about?
\u201cI tend to write contemporary romance, but this is a full-on rom-com. It\u2019s got the late 2000s rom-com vibes like \u2018When in Rome\u2019 or \u201827 Dresses.\u2019 The book centers around Georgia, who is a romance author who can write everybody\u2019s happy ending but her own. She makes a wish to know what her happy ending will be, and then suddenly, the three fictional men from her books poof into existence. The book is fun and silly, and it takes those rom-com archetypes and tropes and plays with them. The book, in essence, is a conversation about the happy ending we see for ourselves versus the happy ending that life actually has in store for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Why do you write romance?
\u201cAt its core, it\u2019s about relationships, and not just the relationship between the couple, but the relationship the character has with themselves, with the world around them, with other people. It\u2019s a study of people, and I\u2019m always curious about what makes people tick and what makes people happy, what makes people get through trauma everything that kind of goes into the sauce of our living experience. That\u2019s what drives us as humans being in community with each other. And that\u2019s what romance is about. It just fills me with so much joy as a writer to be able to explore that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Does Orange County play a role in your books?
\u201cAll of my books take place in Orange County or Western New York, where I grew up, and a lot of the time an extra character in my books is the community that they live in. If you live in this area, when you read my books, even places that were fictionalized I think you can figure out what real places inspired those. \u2018Book Boyfriends\u2019 takes place in Tustin, and I weave in fictional elements of the city of Tustin, as well as real elements.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fullerton-based romance author Melissa Whitney\u2019s sixth novel \u201cBook Boyfriends\u201d is a nostalgic and whimsical comedy. Credit: Irvin Rivera…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":196644,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164,87956],"class_list":{"0":"post-196643","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-anaheim","8":"tag-anaheim","9":"tag-anaheim-headlines","10":"tag-anaheim-news","11":"tag-authors"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196643\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/196644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}