A Little Ditty About Mad Love
“I didn’t mean to write a book about falling apart — but that’s how all the best love stories start.”
I didn’t set out to become this author. I’ve been writing since I was a kid—wild little worlds that didn’t make sense and somehow meant everything. In fourth grade, I entered a school contest with a book about deforestation (tiny me saving the rainforest with a stapled spine and big feelings). That’s where I fell in love with storytelling: asking “what if,” poking holes, and making something honest out of a mess.
Mad Love started with a different kind of mess. Real life. The breakup you don’t post about. I wrote because my heart was loud and I needed somewhere to put it. The characters showed up first—half-whispers at 2 a.m., full conversations by sunrise. The heroine had been orbiting me for years, a woman who takes on more than she should and still finds a way to glow. The hero? He changed under my hands. He evolved from a man I couldn’t quite trust into a hero even I didn’t expect—steady where it counts, flawed where it matters, and somehow exactly the friction Harlee needed.
The question that wouldn’t stop knocking was stubborn and straightforward: What if two people mirrored everything I was learning about love, boundaries, and vulnerability—and still chose each other? What if they didn’t tidy themselves up first? What if love wasn’t a reward for perfection, but the catalyst for truth?
If I’m honest, the scariest part wasn’t writing the complex scenes—it was believing anyone would care. Is it good enough? Am I good enough? Hitting “save” is safe. Hitting “share” is a dare.
And the complex scenes were… complex. The ones that require you to bleed on purpose. I remember staring at the cursor the day I wrote the antagonist. I didn’t want to be the “bitter, man-hating” trope. I wanted to tell the truth. To show the subtle ways harm hides in charm; to climb inside the logic of a cheater, an abuser, a liar—and make it unmistakable without preaching. Writing that was ugly-beautiful. It felt like closure for every woman I love, for every version of me that swallowed red flags and called it romance. On the page, I had to ask myself out loud:
Why do I accept love I don’t deserve? Why do I believe words over patterns? Why do I choose the storm and then call it fate?
People always ask for a line I almost cut. Here’s the truth: it was never just one line. I am a lover of details. I write from both the 3,000-foot view and the 3-inch view, because life exists in both. Mad Love once ballooned past 500k words (I know. You’re welcome). I trimmed whole scenes I adored, paragraphs I wrote at 3 a.m. with tear-salty tea and a playlist on loop. But the reason I fight for detail is simple: our love lives are the journey, not the destination. If we all ended up with our first crush, we’d have no story—just a prologue.
Somewhere in the drafting, my ideas about love shifted. Boundaries stopped feeling like walls and started reading like invitations. Vulnerability became less about confession and more about clarity. And the tropes? They shapeshifted. This story began as a poem in a college workshop, flirted with self-help, wandered into discovery, and then landed on the idea of “having it all.” Because why can’t we have both—desire and peace, accountability and softness, a partner and our whole self?
If Mad Love were a feeling, it would be yellow.
A color that hums.
A scent like fresh, clean air after weeks of rain.
A temperature like sunlight on your cheeks in July—warm enough to make you close your eyes and remember yourself.
Writing this book didn’t fix me. It changed me. It made me braver about telling the truth and kinder about how long it can take to reveal the truth. Harlee and August are my “what if”—two people who learn to want boldly and choose carefully. Two people who don’t perform love; they practice it.
If you want to feel what I felt writing it, start here: Mad Love: The Soundtrack.
From Karma, with love. 💛
