On the Same Page

I’m delighted that a new edition of On the Same Page was released by my publisher HarperCollins on 1 April 2022. As part of the promotion, I wrote a blog post for ARRA, the Australian Romance Readers Association.

On the Same Page is a romantic comedy that explores what it means to be a reader (and writer) of romance, and the judgments people make about the genre that we in the ARRA community love. When HarperCollins, the publisher of my rural romance titles, said they’d like to republish a sparkling new edition of On the Same Page, I was delighted. And when a talented designer put not only a woman with a book but a man on a horse on the cover, I was doubly delighted!

The main characters in On the Same Page are Miles Franklin, a romance writer, and Lars Kristensen, a publisher of literary fiction. This is very much an enemies to lovers story, which isn’t so unusual, but there is another layer to the story as well, because as Miles writes her best-selling novels, and the characters in them fall in love, she also falls in love with Lars.

On first appearance, Lars is grumpy and strait-laced, but as he gets to know Miles, this challenges what he understands about romance, and also what he understood about love. On the Same Page is set in Sydney, and as I know the city well, it was a lot of fun to write about places I’m familiar with. I regularly go to the theatre and ballet at the Opera House, spend lazy afternoons walking through the gardens and watching equestrian activities at Centennial Park, and I enjoy sitting at footpath tables in cafés, so the research for this novel was no trouble to do at all! And, as Miles writes historical romance novels, On the Same Page also gave me the opportunity to think about the many things I enjoy when reading one of my beloved romance genres. Novels such as Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South pop up in On the Same Page, as do quite a few other favourites.

As dedicated readers of romance novels, and all they mean in our lives, I hope ARRA members enjoy reading On the Same Page as much as I enjoyed writing it.