BFFs
Katherine Center and me
It started with meeting Annabel Monaghan on May 27.
I’ve been a fan of hers since her debut novel, Nora Goes Off Script, generated some buzz, and I borrowed it from the Billings Public Library.
Her latest, Dolly all the Time, is her best.
As if that wasn’t awesome enough, then this happened.
So yeah, Katherine Center and I are BFFs.
I mean, we didn’t exchange phone numbers or email addresses, but still.
In the last ten years, there’s been no writer I wanted to meet more.
I first remember seeing Katherine Center’s books in Target. Her novel What You Wish For came out in 2020. I borrowed that from the Billings Public Library too, possibly at/around the same time I borrowed Nora.
(See a pattern here? I’ve discovered most of my favorite authors, going all the way back to Judy Blume, after borrowing their books from the library.)
And, as so often happens when I find an author I love, I proceeded to read everything that author has written.
When it comes to Katherine Center, she has only gotten better.
I loved not only what she wrote and how she wrote it.
I loved how similar we were.
The sense of humor.
The Duran Duran fanfiction. (And hel-lo… Rio is her favorite album!)
The love of the Nora Ephron trifecta.
The witty banter of dialogue.
The love of rom-com and, as she calls them, kissing books.
So many times, I read something she wrote or said and either thought I said that too! or Damn, I wish I said it as well as she did.
Katherine Center and I even share the same philosophy about love stories.
She said it all perfectly in her essay “Why Love Stories Can Change the World”:
Romance novels, rom-coms, love stories—they all run on a blissful sense that we’re moving toward something better.
Moreover…
We get to watch people get good at love.
We get to witness infinite ways that characters master the pro-social behaviors that make all our lives better—how to listen, and learn, and connect, and nurture, and care-take, and trust, and appreciate, and savor.
We get to see people overcome their prejudices, change their minds, forgive each other, and sacrifice for something larger than themselves.
All things, by the way, that are essential to human happiness—and routinely undervalued.
With so many similarities between my BFF and me in terms of writing style and interests and philosophy, why is Katherine Center KATHERINE CENTER and I’m… starting over?
Why is she filling auditoriums during book tours and I’m over the moon if five people show up to one of my events?
I reread my novel All of You last week. It’s still my favorite novel I’ve written, probably because it’s still the most recent novel I’ve published (although I’m still working on another one. Promise.)
It’s good.
It’s got witty banter.
Moments that still make me verklempt.
Every character moves towards something better.
It’s a love story for sure.
So why didn’t All of You make it to Target shelves?
What made Katherine Center and Annabel Monaghan so bankable?
I asked none of this in envy.
(OK, maybe a little bit of envy.)
Rather, I was posing the question from a business perspective.
The answer was branding.
When it comes to craft, I hold my writing up against Katherine Center and Annabel Monaghan any day of the week and twice on Sunday.
But when I looked at my website and my book covers, I noticed that they didn’t have a cohesive look or theme.
I usually describe my books as “a blend of heart and humor,” but what does that really mean?
Of course, Katherine Center and Annabel Monaghan have traditional publishers with in-house marketing and publicity to help them shape and form and execute their branding.
I’m a one-woman show. And I say that not out of victimhood, but to gently remind myself, solely from a business perspective, of one reason why I’ve fallen behind.
I started out wanting to write Chick Lit. I was proud of that.
I wanted to write stories that were light. Fun. Feel-good. Made you laugh and made you cry in the best way possible.
I wanted to write kissing books.
Then Chick Lit went the way of disco and rebranded itself as Rom-Com and Women’s Fiction, and I refused to put pink anywhere near my book covers. Shied away from tropes.
Less shoe-shopping, more life life-ing.
I was no more comfortable with being branded as a Women’s Fiction author because why wasn’t there a Men’s Fiction genre? Why was it perfectly acceptable—expected, even—for women to read books written by men, but men were excluded as a target market for books written by women?
Katherine Center’s earlier books were, shall we say, heavier. The pandemic changed her focus.
She wanted light. She wanted fun. She wanted to feel good.
She wanted to write kissing books.
Just like I’d started out wanting.
Just like I want now.
As usual, she articulated her brand way better than I did or could.
And I knew that if I wanted to be successful—not necessarily fill auditoriums, but get people talking about my books, get readers to feel good and have fun—then I needed to do more than think creatively.
I needed to think strategically.
Not like a writer, but rather like a CEO.
Because that’s what I am now.
I’ve set up a new corporation, complete with a publishing imprint, services for writers, and, eventually, an online store to sell my books directly.
Running three different branches involves a lot of moving pieces, and I have a long to-do list including overhauling my website, re-issuing my self-published titles, reviving my author newsletter (not to be confused with this Substack), reviving my Facebook author page, improving spreadsheet record-keeping, setting up the store, designing graphics and logos, and business cards, and so much more.
And, you know, writing and publishing new novels.
I still haven’t perfectly summed it up in a tagline—that pesky writer’s block—but for now, for myself, I’m going with this:
I want to do everything my BFF Katherine Center is doing, but in the way that only Elisa Lorello can do it.
Put another way, the writer’s version of “I’ll have what she’s having.”