How to Build An Author Community
On friendship & mutual support with romance novelist Liana De la Rosa
Welcome to The Village! I’m Kate – an essayist and mother fascinated by the ways we create community in our lives, inspired by those who do it well, and convinced that thriving communities are what makes for a joyful world.
One thing I love about Romancelandia is how committed it is to building joyful, supportive communities. I’ve known romance novelist Liana De la Rosa for years, and in every space I’ve encountered her work, she is often the biggest cheerleader for other writers and readers, celebrating every accomplishment and enthusiastically cheering others on, always an inspiration.
She’s recently back from the Tucson Festival of Books where she hosted panels alongside the legendary Beverly Jenkins, Cat Sebastian, and Erica Ridley. De la Rosa’s latest novel is Ana María and the Fox, out with Berkley now, and in huge news, was selected as a top pick for April by Book of the Month!
The book series follows three sisters as they flee Mexico in the wake of the French army’s occupation, and head to London. Of course, the titular Ana María falls in love in this first book with the handsome Gideon Fox, a man who is fighting his own battles in Parliament, and though we know a happily ever after awaits us, the two have to overcome multiple obstacles on that path toward love together.
It was a joy to catch up, and here, De la Rosa shares some of her tips on joining or creating a community of writers, how to be supportive of your peers, and her hopes for paying the generosity of her Romancelandia communities forward, especially for other authors from marginalized backgrounds.
This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.
You are one busy lady! You are a patroness for The Drawing Room Historical Romance Group, an in-demand book festival attendee, and your next novel, Ana María and the Fox, is out now! The novel kicks off a series in which three sisters are sent from Mexico to London during the French occupation of Mexico – obviously, with only each other to rely on in a new country, their bond is so important. How did you approach writing their sense of community?
Ana María and her two younger sisters, Isabella and Gabby, are relatively close in age, but they are not close at the beginning of the book. They have grown up with a domineering father, a self-made man from an indigenous community who has become the adviser to the president of Mexico. He had to overcome a lot of adversity to do that. He carries this chip on his shoulders and has wielded his power over his family with an iron fist, and so the young women have been brought up to view each other as adversaries because they're all competing for attention. When they leave Mexico, when they come to London, they only have each other to rely upon. They know what they left behind. They are basically the torchbearers for their family. They're carrying their family story, and I wanted them to explore. Not only are they fish out of water in London, trying to come to terms with the different norms and different expectations placed upon them, but they don't really know each other. Now they're in a position where they have to rely upon each other.
I liked the idea of exploring not just how women were expected to behave and comport themselves in public in Victorian society, but how these women who were so obviously foreign would comport themselves in society and then find allies within each other. While the romance is the central point of the story, their growing relationship with each other is very much a part of it. They really come a long way and I didn't see how they could possibly find happiness and build their own community without each other.
I do that in terms of my own life. I live away from home. We’re in the same state but my parents are not close by, my sister is not close by. We have to drive a distance to see each other. And even now, we have a good sense of self, we really love where we live, but there's always that missing piece. These three sisters were lucky enough that they were able to do that together. They were able to leave and then they were able to decide who they wanted to be and what sort of relationship they wanted to have with each other. That was really fun to write!
You are part of a powerhouse Latina writing group that includes multiple romance stars. How do you all nurture community with each other?
They’ve been very supportive for a while! It really did start off with the fact that I was Latina and I was open about being a Latina. Even though I wasn't writing Latina characters [at the time], they still shared my posts, they would celebrate new books coming out. And then gradually I received invitations to in-person retreats, and then during COVID I got added to text conversations, and we're all going to a book conference this summer. I appreciate that I was included simply because of how I identified and presented myself. I actually had a conversation with Adriana Herrera last year. We were both at the Tucson Festival of Books, and it was our first time meeting in person, and we spent an afternoon just writing, hanging out, talking shop with each other. I made a comment about how appreciative I was that they just brought me into the fold. Ana María and the Fox will be my first time releasing a book with Latina characters. Their support of me has never been about what I was writing but just that I was writing, and I mentioned that to her, and she's like, ‘you know, when you chose your pen name you could have chosen any other name. You could have been Liana Harrington or Smith or whatever. But you chose De la Rosa.’
I said it was important to represent my cultural, ethnic background, and she said, “Exactly. Exactly. No matter what you were writing, you were representing all of us. Emerging Latina writers need to see other writers succeeding and doing well and opening doors.”
I thought about that a lot, and I’m trying to pass it on. This series was the first series I ever pitched with Latina characters. We both know how Eurocentric and white historical romance is. I had been on submission with other series before that didn’t have Latina main characters but did have diverse characters in diverse settings. I kept getting the same pushback: “We love this but we don’t know how we would market it.” That was really frustrating. I kind of feel like I saved writing Latina characters because I was worried they would get rejected, and I knew if I wrote them I would be putting a lot of myself into it. I can look back now and realize that and I think it’s helped having this community of other authors who know what that feels like when you’re writing people who look like you and who have your same customs. They know what it feels like to be told ‘we don't know how we market it’ or ‘ we already have an author writing those stories.’ So even though I wasn't writing those stories at that time, I appreciate that these authors gathered me into them. We always get excited and celebrate when we see other Latina authors coming up and writing stories because it's important to support each other. We’ve been supported. I’ve been lucky enough to get that and I want to pay it forward, and it’s exciting to see our group grow.
How does community show up elsewhere in your work and your life?
I don’t have the biggest friend network in my day-to-day real life. I value my online network a whole lot. They helped tremendously getting through the pandemic when we didn’t really have much of an escape. It’s been really helpful to have people that are a text message away, like Lisa Lin and Elizabeth Bright - we have an ongoing messenger conversation that I know I can just pop into. Just the most mundane things, like ‘look what I saw on Twitter!’ It helps to feel less alone and there are certain things that you don't have to explain to someone else. I can vent to my husband who you know is wonderful and he’s been so incredibly supportive, but he doesn’t understand how vulnerable you feel putting your art, something that you work on so hard, out into the world, and I know that Lisa can or I know that you can. Just knowing there are people who I can send up that bat signal to, I’m convinced that has literally gotten me this far.
What advice do you have for authors looking to build their own communities with other writers and readers?
Find the avenue you’re most comfortable with whether that's Facebook or Instagram or Twitter, and try to find people who have a goal similar to yours, like they want to be traditionally published or they want to write a historical romance. For me, I just interact with posts or their tweets and show them support.
I think there are also really great opportunities as far as emerging author programs. The #FridayKiss group on Facebook is great, they have a lot of resources. Part of it is just dipping your toes into different areas and finding out what's comfortable for you. And then once you find something that is, cannonball into that. Mutual fangirling always.
How do you keep those spaces supportive and keep the mentality of ‘we’re all working together’ toward a goal?
Excellent question. You have to build up a level of trust. You can do that in multiple ways. The most important thing has been to support people, because no one wants to feel like they’re just talking into a vacuum. I’m in some groups that are larger, so there are more members, and it’s very easy to assume that someone else is gonna reply or respond. In smaller groups, it’s very important to lift each other up so that you're cultivating that sense of community. As that trust builds, you can go to them and be like, “Hey, I noticed that you hired this publicist for that book. How does that turn out? Would you mind giving a referral? Or, you know, I need a beta reader to read my query letter, would you be up for it?”
In the beginning, when you’re fostering that new community, it’s just a matter of stepping up and being supportive, and then the trust builds.
I have a small Discord server that I run for members of my fandom, who want to dip their toes into publishing, whether that's traditional or self-publishing. In the beginning, as I was putting it together, I knew that I had to do the heavy lifting. I couldn’t just expect people to come in and immediately start talking. So I started conversations, and I shared resources. I invited guests in, I made it so that people felt comfortable posting their own questions. And for the last, maybe four months, I’ve been present but I haven’t been as engaged as I had been, and the group has gone on, because I put in the work initially. People knew that they could come and be themselves and share. So I think that sometimes it just takes time and effort. Be the team member you want others to be.
Representation matters, and this new series draws on your Mexican heritage. What are some ways you wove that legacy into this series?
The story takes place in London. They visit the opera house and the park, so a lot of the setting is going to be very familiar to historical romance readers. But the characters, Ana María and her sisters come from Mexico and so their mentality is through that lens. How they view London society is different.
Ana María is the eldest daughter. She is caring for her sisters and she's just getting to know her desires to meet expectations, to be perfect, to set a good example for her sisters. The other two sisters, Isá and Gabby are unapologetically who they are, and it was so fun to write them. It’s a fun way to reflect and provide commentary about society but through a different lens, a colonial lens, I guess you can say. I always knew that I wanted to incorporate unique characters, but it wasn't until I thought about the French occupation and what that would mean for women from a wealthy family who might be sent away and yet are so linked to their home. It comes with them.
I want readers to leave the book feeling like they’ve learned something new and be interested in learning more. I want them to realize that the world was still much bigger than what we've been shown in books before. Even now our world is so Western-specific that it’s very easy to forget that there are people living all over the place, with very different lives, and those people have a history that some of us know nothing about but is very fascinating.
The sisters may now be in London, but their worldview hasn’t changed. They bring those sensibilities with them. Obviously, they’re outsiders. The male main character [Gideon Fox] is also an outsider in a lot of ways and that’s why he and Ana María are drawn together. They know what it’s like to be an outsider and to navigate a world that wasn’t necessarily created for you, or necessarily wants you but you’re determined to take up that space.
And lastly, whose work & legacy inspires you?
Really great question. When you think of Black historical romance, you think of Beverly Jenkins, and how her characters and books and worlds are so unapologetically celebrating Black excellence and Black love. I would love people to someday, when they think of Latinx romance, to think of my work.
Authors like Adriana Herrera – she’s just such a badass. There's nothing she can’t write. She writes historical romance, she has sapphic heroines and paranormal fantasy stories. If it’s a story she wants to write and she wants to tell, she goes out and does it. It is just really inspiring.
Thank you so much, Liana. Ana María and the Fox is out now! Order your copy here and visit Liana at www.lianainbloom.com. Who are authors with communities you love? We’d love to know in the comments below!