• She loves her community garden. He wants to bulldoze it.

    The short tagline for my next book, My Book Boyfriend, is: “She loves her community garden; He wants to bulldoze it for housing. When feelings grow, will they blossom or turn to rubble?”

    A couple standing in a garden, their backs to each other, each reading a book
    A laugh-out-loud, enemies-to-lovers, feel-good romantic comedy!

    It releases August 10. It will be on sale for 99 cents for August, and then the price will increase to $2.99.

    (Thank you to my critique partner, Giulia Skye, for the short blurb, and I highly recommend her books.)

    Conflict

    In this book, I finally had my two love interests in direct conflict, as recommended by several classes on writing romance. As Linnea Sinclair says in her classes, “conflict is two dogs, one bone.” (I’m excited to take her upcoming classes this August and September.) It certainly makes writing that enemies-to-lovers snappy banter easier. But I have a hard time making them enemies such that they truly hate each other. I still think that the absolute best enemies-to-lovers is Sally Thorne’s The Hating Game.

    She Loves Her Community Garden

    Community Gardens in New York City – the Elizabeth Street Garden

    As a result, I researched community gardens in New York City. The website of the Elizabeth Street Garden in the Little Italy neighborhood of New York City was particularly helpful. Here are some pictures of this lovely garden that is under the threat of demolishment.

    community garden with pathway with people reading on chairs and talking
    We may have had too much fun blurring faces.
    She loves her community green garden with brick wall
    Elizabeth Street Garden
    No, the park was not filled with headless zombies!
    Elizabeth Street Garden

    This article was also incredibly interesting and full of information: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/07/us/elizabeth-street-garden-nyc-development-ctrp/index.html

    If you read My Book Boyfriend, I think you will recognize many of Lily’s arguments for supporting the garden from the above article.

    Anyway, I hope you enjoy reading all about how Lily loves her community garden and Rupert wants to bulldoze it!

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