“Swipe Right For Love” was my first and only attempt at writing to market in the Sapphic romance world. It’s a romantic comedy about perils of dating in a digital world at middle age.
In the planning stages of this book, it was scheduled to be a co-write between MJ Maguire and myself. It came to life because of MJ’s own personal dating disasters, and me telling her that she needed to stop being so picky when picking up chicks. A lot of her and I were melded into the personality of the main character.
I think, if I am not mistaken, were going to tandem write this… each of us taking a “bad date” chapter then combining them together into a cohesive story line. In the end, MJ became too busy with her 9-5 job that the project just sat for a while; until she told me to take the reins and write the book myself.
Some of the “dates” were based on my version of some real people (other authors) on Facebook in the Sapphic world. Maybe you can guess a few… The situations were based on research and google searches of “worst dates” on the web. I took ideas from these humorous anecdotes I found and then changed them to Sapphic characters and to fit the story and setting.
The only story that is actually based on somewhat truth was Taylor’s, where she took Dana (the main character) to a swingers club and the ghosting that came afterward. That is 100% true and it happened to me. Despite being married, I had permission to research this story and a pass to have a fling outside our marriage. No judgements because I am poly.
While the story has a HEA (Happily Ever-After), it was never about finding love nor the relationship that came from all of these bad dates. The book was about the DATES. It was more comedy than romance. While I love how the story turned out, the biggest complaints readers had with it was the lack of storyline with the final woman, who was never supposed to be an online date.
My biggest complaint was that it was written early in my career, and I find that it could use a serious rewrite to fix the amatuer prose.
If you’d like to read “Swipe Right For Love,” you can purchase it on Amazon or read on Kindle Unlimited.