Marina Hill on Subverting the Billionaire Trope in Romance

The billionaire trope is a staple in romance, but what happens when the hero decides he doesn't actually want the money? Today, I’m talking with Marina Hill about her journey from writing fanfiction to crafting intricate stories that challenge genre standards. We discuss the anti-billionaire lead in Royal Pain, the vital importance of representing undiagnosed chronic pain, and why the enemies-with-benefits trope remains undefeated. 

Marina Hill is a multifaceted author romance to historical fiction with an eventual path into fantasy. With over a dozen publications of short stories, her work has been hailed as fun comfort reads while managing to discuss important topics. A New Jersey native, Marina spends her days working around books and her nights writing them. 

In this episode, we're discussing:

• A look at the inspiration behind the characters in Royal Pain, a heroine who inherits a fortune and chooses the radical act of giving it all away.
• A discussion on chronic pain representation, specifically the struggle of living with pain that lacks a formal diagnosis and the importance of partners who validate a heroine's lived experience.
• How representing curly hair and shared cultural backgrounds serves as a form of intimacy on the page, moving beyond surface-level descriptions.
• Marina shares her process for writing deep, believable sisterhood bonds despite being an only child.
• Why the physical tension between characters who hate each other creates a superior foundation for character growth and chemistry.

CONNECT WITH MARINA HILL:

Website

Instagram

BOOKS/AUTHORS MENTIONED:

Roaming Holiday by Marina Hill (Amazon)

Royal Pain by Marina Hill (Amazon)

Running list of books mentioned (Doc)

Transcript

Intro: From Fanfiction to Indie Romance

SPEAKER_01 0:00

This conversation starts off with a bang right into fanfic and the things that we did or maybe didn't do with the stories that we wrote when we were younger. Today we have Marina Hill on to talk all about how she weaves themes of mental health, sisterhood, chronic pain, and so much more into her stories. We go deep into why The Enemies with Benefits is superior, as well as more of the nuances that go behind creating diverse representation that is authentic. Listener discretion is advised. This podcast contains mature content intended for adult audiences only. Hello, Marina. I'm so excited to have you on the podcast. If you could start by telling everyone a bit about your author journey.

SPEAKER_00 0:51

Thank you so much for having me here. I'm so very excited and very grateful. And a bit about my author journey is a lot like many other authors. I did start out writing very young. I started my first original novel because I did, I was definitely a fan fiction kid, but I started my first novel when I was 13. And it thankfully will never see the light of day. But I have not necessarily stopped since then. I did some short stories in high school, and I tried to go through traditional. I queried and then I went indie, and I started to kind of take my career in my own hands, and that's led me to here since about 2021, 22. So it's been a journey, but I'm very happy to be where I am now.

SPEAKER_01 1:40

That is so cool. You're actually unlocked a memory for me. I try not to think about my childhood in any respect because I grew up in a cult. But you just reminded me for my senior year, we had to do a project and we had to write a story. And I wrote, because it was a fundamentalist Christian cult, I wrote a Job's daughter fanfic. Job had a bunch of kids, right? What was his one of his daughters going through with everything happening with his trials and his situations?

SPEAKER_00 2:19

That is the first time I've ever heard of a Bible fanfiction.

SPEAKER_01 2:22

They were like, oh, wait, whoever writes, everybody who's a senior, write a story, and then we'll pick a winner for one of them. And I was the only one that wrote this story out of four or five girls. And the leader of the cult, she was the one who was reading them, and it was all fade to black. There was some kissing, but I didn't know anything. It was completely fade to black. And she was like, it was very spicy.

SPEAKER_00 2:57

That you gotta start right in where you can. Right? Something.

SPEAKER_01 3:04

Okay, so that's probably not the kind of fanfic I started with.

SPEAKER_00 3:08

But now I want to know what kind of fanfic did you start with? Oh my god, how dare you ask me this question? So the thing is, I uh I can't believe I'm cheering this. But in eighth grade is when it started. And I started loving the outsiders. Okay. And I was fully on Team Dallas, Winston. And the thing is, it went somewhere. I got like, I think at this point I got like five to a thousand reads or something, and like tens of thousands of readers. So it went somewhere. Like Wapad days or more amateur. Oh my god, what was it? What was it? Quote fee, quote, people do different things. Yeah, I was on a weird one, and then I finally switched to Wapad. I don't know why I ended up on quote fee. Maybe that's because where all the other outsiders fan fiction was. But I went there and then I went to what's even the name of the movie. It was a young Sean Aston. I don't know why, but a young Sean Aston did something. That is so awesome though. Exactly. I cannot believe you had me share this, but yes, that is I was very much an 80s, 90s kid. I grew up in the 2000s. I still love the 2000s to my soul. But I started to go into the historical fiction route when for school I had to read The Outsiders. So the Outsiders literally started my fascination not only with historical fiction in the 80s, but with older men. Because an adult Matt Damon, I was like that I like that. And then Wesley was born. There you go.

SPEAKER_01 4:57

So anyway. You're welcome. Things you never knew about Marina. Here you go.

SPEAKER_00 5:05

Well, full circle. I mean, the thing is, Wesley as an archetype was kind of in my very early readers, and that would be like writer friends in a way, because this book was never published. But Wesley and Nina were very much their archetype of a dynamic and relationship was actually already written in a fantasy book, in the first fantasy book I wrote. And it wasn't until I turned back and I'm like, this is identical. So Nina and Wesley were destined to manifest, or them as a role were destined to really come out in a book form, in any way, shape, or form, whether it's in a fantasy book set in ancient like Africa versus a contemporary romance novel. But their dynamic was really similar, and I was I shocked myself. And then I led to that because of my outsiders thing. So all tracks together. I love it.

SPEAKER_01 5:58

And the book that you're referencing is Roaming Holiday. Okay. First of all, this cover is gorgeous. I want to smooch it.

SPEAKER_00 6:07

I have the best artist ever. She has been with me literally since book one. I feel like it's tradition now to get art done by her with every cover or

The Anti-Billionaire: Giving the Fortune Away

SPEAKER_00 6:15

with every book. At this point, it's a brand. Same person.

SPEAKER_01 6:18

And one thing I love is that you have this kind of as a Roman holiday meets Princess Diaries as someone who loves both of those movies very much. Audrey Hepburn fashion was always goals. One of my favorite movies ever. And then Princess Diaries just grew up watching that. It's so awesome.

unknown 6:42

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 6:44

So tell everybody a bit about this one, what they can expect, what the storyline is, etc. Obviously, no spoilers for anyone who hasn't yet.

SPEAKER_00 6:54

So Roman Holiday is definitely very much like you said, Roman Holiday-esque in a way. Definitely inspired such by that. Definitely more heavily influenced by Princess Diaries. And just a general loose concept and with the vibes that kind of feels that way. But it is about Nina, who just graduated college and is feeling very lost because she had all of this stuff set out in front of her. But then she gets cheated on by her boyfriend. And they break up and she goes on a family vacation only to discover that she is the heir to this quaint little Mediterranean island. It's somewhere in between Greece and Italy, in that little ocean sea area. And she spends the summer deciding if she wants to take the throne and just exploring the island and learning more about her ancestry and her mother, who she doesn't have a lot of memories of. And all the while she's falling in love with her bodyguard who is running from his past. And so there's definitely some John Wick vibes in it. And I think that kind of catches some people by surprise. So I'm trying to make that known a little more that there is a John Wick type. So I really love making that mishmash of types of genres. Like I describe it as like dark light romance in a way. It's very much a watered, watered, watered down dark romance with the little action and adventure on the undertones.

SPEAKER_01 8:22

Yes, I definitely agree. I think that it is like the first half of the book, you're getting to know the characters, you're getting to know their story. And then once you get to know them, you're like, oh no, there's some stuff here. Let's go deeper. And that's where you get into more of the action-y part. And I was, I wanna don't want to say pleasantly surprised because I the cover is gorgeous, so I already knew I was gonna like it. But I was I don't know that I've read enough royalty books to be like, yeah, this is a genre that I like. But I think that the way that you meshed the just an average girl who's just trying to figure herself out. Okay, now I have this decision before me of taking the throne, and also this bodyguard who's hot, who also like there's that forbidden element, there's the, like you said, the John Wick vibes. And I, yeah, so fun and such an enjoyable story. But I gotta say, one of the things that I absolutely loved about the first book is the relationship with the sister. Oh and as someone who has a little sister, my and it's so I'm the oldest of five kids, but me and my sister are the only girls. And so there's always been that like deeper connection with just us of like always having to share a room, always having to be like put together to do activities because the boys are doing sports and you guys are doing something else. And so yeah, it just made me like, I miss my sister. So then I had to text her. Like, I love that relationship that you've moved there.

SPEAKER_00 10:01

I was so surprised to know I have no sisters. I thought you were gonna be like, I have the best sister. I have all brothers and all older brothers. I'm the youngest. I grew up with too many men in my household. So I would say that in a way, I suppose I see that dynamic with my mom, because my mom has the older sister, and they've definitely fit like that. My mom is more of the carefree one. My mom's the one you need to be like mom chill. And my aunt is the one who's like, we have this scheduled and then this scheduled, and then we'll be here at this time. Yeah. And then also my best friend who I've grown up with my whole life, Emily. I love her to death. She has a big family as well, but she has sisters, and I witness their throwdowns. So I'm a very blended family too. So I really I have such a mishmash of experiences in my life, and I love to be able to pull from any of that, specifically from my family.

SPEAKER_01 11:04

And there is diversity in your books, which I think is an important point to note. The first book is interracial, and then the second book would be considered black romance, right? Yes. Okay. Let's go ahead and get into this. Okay, look at this. Come on.

SPEAKER_00 11:20

With the green, and they're all so pretty.

SPEAKER_01 11:24

You have the younger sisters story, which this is I don't want to call it a duet because that's not the right word. Duology is the right kind of.

SPEAKER_00 11:32

They're two sides of the same coin in a way. Because there are four books total that's gonna be in this year's plus the novella, so four and a half. But their books are more closely resembled, and it's something that I ran into long after. Like I wrote the books. I was like, oh, I can't do this one thing because this doesn't make sense for their characters. Initially, I actually wanted Maya's book to take place in New York, but I was like, she would not be away from her sister. They're too close, especially with like how I wanted to figure out like their timeline, like Nina and Wesley's happily ever after. I knew that, especially considering that, her sister would not leave her side. So I had to figure out a way to set her story in Maldana again, even though that wasn't I didn't really want to. But that's when the setting really took a step back because Maldana is very much its own character in roaming holiday. But I really pushed that to the back burner in a way and focused on the smaller places like her house, the Felicity Gardens, and then Tristan's art studio,

Chronic Pain in Fiction: The Importance of Being Believed

SPEAKER_00 12:40

and all of that stuff. So I really made sure I took extra care in where things were taking place.

SPEAKER_01 12:46

Nice. So tell us a bit about that one, the younger sister's story.

SPEAKER_00 12:51

So Maya is this fierce and slightly immature. The best part about Nina and Maya is that I really grew with them. This idea that I had for Maya really evolved by the time I got to writing her book. And I felt like I grew with her. I got to see her mature because my birthday is actually tomorrow on April 6th. Happy birthday. Thank you. And I'm turning 26. And I started writing roaming holiday. Nina was older than me when I was like 23. I remember I was like, oh, I turned my Nina year this year. And it's so interesting as a writer and as a young writer because you develop your skills so quickly with each book. You just you learn more and more, and it gets such like at a rapid pace in a way. And I felt myself grow alongside Maya from this more hot-headed, very much like bull in a china shop type character, to still very much headstrong, but a bit more refined with a bit more direction and a bit more life experience. I put her in the forefront of the media. You know, there's always going to be one that the media loves, and then there's going to be one that they turn on because they can't love all women. Right. So they really turned on her because she's also just a young woman living her life. What do you do if you're like, if you were 23, 24, and you got hit with an insane amount of wealth, you would go batshit crazy. That's exactly what she did. And the only difference is that the world was watching. Right. So they judged her so much more harshly for it. And she's trying to put herself together, trying to pour everything into this garden that she helped create something that's really her passion. And then the one person who can ruin it all walks into the door and she sniffs something right away and slams the door in his face. Figuratively, yes. But does she do it? It's not like she would do. Very much. She does not pull her punches whatsoever. And Tristan walks in and he is just trying to lie his way into getting what he needs and not knowing the lesson that's going to be along the way. They really bump heads in like the worst and best ways. Very entertaining. Writing their banter scenes was my favorite. It was a little difficult to come up with a character that matches her because I didn't want one that would overpower her, but also one that she can easily trample over. Just she's a lot of woman, as Tristan says. She just has this ferocity that a lot of men can't handle. So I had to really find someone who could handle her with not handle her, let her be herself.

SPEAKER_01 15:44

Yeah. And then she also has a chronic illness or chronic pain, I should say, and has not been diagnosed. And so why was that important in writing this story? Because I wasn't even diagnosed.

SPEAKER_00 16:01

Her illness is more closely resembled to mine, not a hundred percent. I draw a lot of the emotional aspects from me. And when you're going through that, you don't know, and you've had everything tests done, you think that you're on top of things and that you're doing everything right, you're working out, you're eating better. And it's just there's always something that that just pops up. And it's just unexplainable. I didn't have an answer for it myself, so I was like, I can't give an answer for her. So it was interesting. I was talking to a friend of mine. She said, Are you ever going to like tell what the illness is? And I was like, No, I mean, it's based on mine. And then I got the diagnosis, so maybe. And she was like, hmm, short story, do a bonus story. So I was like, oh. So I might do a story of when she gets diagnosed that is potentially on the horizon. But I wanted to just portray the reality of it, but also the fact that just because you don't have this diagnosis doesn't mean that it's any less real. I wanted to portray that the people in her life believe her and they accommodate that and they don't hold her against it simply because the medicine isn't up to date. Really, it's not focused on women's health and autoimmune disorders and these things that you can't see.

SPEAKER_01 17:25

So yeah, those invisible pains and invisible illnesses, I think, are so prevalent. We had an episode with Sabina Nordkist earlier this season where she talked about chronic illness in romances and having interstitial cystitis. And I mentioned I have interstitial cystitis, which pretty much for anyone who hasn't listened to that episode, means that I have potholes of exposed nerves in my bladder. So if I drink certain things or sometimes intercourse, like certain things can just flare it up and irritate it. And so I have to be very careful about those things. I have to be careful about what I eat, which stinks because I love a red sauce lasagna. Like, come on, I want to eat those whatever I want. But if I'm having a flare-up, I know I actually cannot have that. But even like from that conversation of saying that, I had someone DM me and they said

Building Sisterhood Dynamics as an Only Child

SPEAKER_01 18:22

they were like, My sister has interstitial cystitis. She just got diagnosed. I didn't even know this was like something that people dealt with. And I feel like when we talk about our illnesses and our pains, and even the undiagnosed ones, right? To just, I think it allows people to be so seen when they're reading these stories. I even think about when my mom was alive, she was eventually diagnosed with fibromyalgia, but that's like the invisible nobody knows disease, right? Which nobody really knows what caused it. Nobody really knows why it's happening. It's kind of aloof, and I feel like it's just a sticker they kind of throw on women without actually getting to the actual root of it. But she would be like, Alicia, I can't even zip up my pants because my hands hurt so bad and I don't know what's happening. She was a registered nurse, she has all the mental knowledge to be able to diagnose herself. She's like, I don't know what's happening. I'm just in so much pain every single day. But nothing looks wrong. I just feel like stories and romance is just such an incredible way to share that representation to allow other people to be seen. And so I'm curious if you've had anyone reach out and say, Oh my goodness, thank you so much for having chronic illness in here and how maybe it reflected their own story.

SPEAKER_00 19:43

Yeah, I definitely have had someone reach out to particularly say that they did really thoroughly enjoy the representation of it. And I have been tagging some of the reviews that say that they really appreciated it. Just as you're talking, I'm really reminding myself that the goal of it isn't to put a label on it. Because I thought I had this one thing, turned out I had this other thing, and it turns out I got the two for one offer, and I walked out with the two diagnosis instead of one. I was like, great. Did not think I had that, but now I do. But even when you get that diagnosis, I felt sicker than I was. I'm like, here's Marina. I yesterday I had no diagnosis, and now I have two, and I'm like, but I feel the same as I did the other day, which in pain, but it's okay. So but doesn't change the fact that I still went through these things because the diagnosis machine and trying to find the right specialist and the right insurance and the right doctor for it, and the doctor who doesn't say, Oh, yeah, no, you're fine. Just the one who actually listens to you and believes you, more importantly. Because that is a whole other monster of itself. That's a whole storyline. And I didn't want that to be her storyline, but I wanted that to be part of her life, and I also wanted to air out some grievances. Yeah. I just wanted to let it be. Rather than having it be something, okay, this is what it is, and this is how we're gonna fix it. Letting that just be a different part of the thing. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:30

You also have a bit of billionaire anti-billionaire aspects to it. And I am a firm believer there are no ethical billionaires. Correct. I'm looking at you, Oprah. There are no ethical billionaires. Like, I saw someone talk about like how if you had made a penny every second, it would take you like 17 days to be a millionaire. But it would take you like thirty seven years to be a billionaire.

SPEAKER_00 21:59

Yeah. I get some people comment so brazenly and they're like, he did what? This isn't necessarily a secret that he donates enough of his money to not be a billionaire. And I'm like, I don't think you understand. He's still obscenely rich.

Ethics and Wealth: Subverting Royal and Billionaire Tropes

SPEAKER_00 22:15

He's still a multimillionaire. That is more money than I will dream of. It's one letter that is changing his status. I promise you, he's still above everyone else. He's still really rich, okay? And so that part was just infuriating. But yeah, I talk about this in roaming holiday, is that the managing and navigating an unethical, inherently unethical system. And Maya definitely gets on her high horse, but she has also earned that high horse. She's like, hey, fuckers, you can do it. I did it, you can do it. Right. It's possible. Look, I have all these estates that were inherited to me that I don't deserve. And it's filled with all of these wealthy and extremely expensive artifacts that can be sold, and that money can help people in this country that I'm trying to represent. So that's exactly what I'm gonna do. So she puts her money where her mouth is, and she holds everyone else to that high standard, especially Tristan, who waltz in trying to get something from her garden or from her job. And she's like, okay, earn it. Show me why this is important to you. And he finds that incredibly hot. And but he has to deal with some unraveling of his own learnings and his own teachings and goes on his own spiritual journey. And when I say spiritual, not simply with money, but his own family. And because he has his own trauma with that, which inherently make it shifts his decision making when it comes to that bridge. But I want to say that it's nuanced and then it's also very not nuanced, but just give her money away.

SPEAKER_01 24:13

Like it's hard. Come on. Think of five places that I'd be like, here's a couple million dollars.

SPEAKER_00 24:20

Oh my god, the things I've said this out on threads before. I'm like, if I was a billionaire, I would be treating GoFundMe's as online shopping. I'd be like, cancer treatment done, funeral paid for, tuition paid. The things that I would do with that money. So I also air out those grievances. That's all my books are for. I love it. Let my frustration out on the world and I asked some sex.

SPEAKER_01 25:01

I was like, I love that. But I think you like you do, right? When you're writing stories, and you're bound to have pieces of yourself or pieces of your story, which I think makes for better stories anyway. There's this whole push, at least as of today, of let's encourage white authors to write BIPOC authors. And I'm like, why not just buy the books that BIPOC authors have already written? Well, that's an option.

SPEAKER_00 25:28

Yeah. The thing is, I have read characters of color written by white authors. And while I'm not going to discourage anyone from including diversity in their books, I will say when they're the main characters, it's always really obvious. It's very obvious when it's written by someone not of that background. And I'm not necessarily saying that in a that's a good or bad thing. It's just, I can just tell. Sometimes, even if they do everything right, you can tell they got the sensitivity readers. It's just, I want to say write what you know, but also don't stand up when you're not supposed to stand up.

SPEAKER_01 26:07

It's interesting. I saw a post, it made me laugh as a curly hair girly that was like curly hair representation. If you're writing a character who has crazy wavy curls, it's what do you mean she doesn't have a bonnet on at night? Yeah. What do you mean she just slept on that whack pillowcase at her boyfriend's house? What do you mean?

SPEAKER_00 26:31

Yes, exactly. That curly hair representation is so very important to me. One of my favorite parts that I wrote was

The Intimacy of Detail: Curly Hair and Cultural Identity

SPEAKER_00 26:40

in Royal Pain when Tristan and Maya are together, and he has let his hair grow out a little bit, and you can see his curls coming in, and she's like, We're matching. And so I just love that kind of intimacy and matching in a way. I don't know why. Maybe it was the fact that I grew up around a lot of white people, but just curly hair in is existence is so important to me and is for it to just be there. It doesn't have to be about her journey into loving her hair, but it's just there. Just there. It's just curls. If I have any type of brand logo, let it just be curls. Come on.

SPEAKER_01 27:31

Yeah, I'm even thinking like tonight, my 11-year-old, I was like, you need to wash your hair tonight because we don't wash our hair every single time we take a shower. That is not something that people with curly hair do. And so I was like, you need to wash your hair tonight in the shower. And so he gets out, and we've been watching the Hunger Games movies together. And so we're on the prequel with President Snow when he's younger. And I'm like, all right, you need to sit here. And I got out the product and sectioned out his hair and put the product in it and shook it out. Because he's got, I don't know, it's the bottom of his jawline, maybe length. And it sprung back up. And I was like, all right, now hold on to the side of the chair, whip your hair around a little bit. Experiences that you understand when you have curly hair. And I'm like, all right, and then you're gonna wear your bonnet tonight. Please don't forget to wear your bonnet tonight. Don't let it fall off in the middle of the night. And he's okay, mom, I got it. I was like, then tomorrow it's gonna look fabulous.

SPEAKER_00 28:24

Yes. Oh my god. I have two nieces. One always wears her bonnet, and the other one just does not. I don't like it. I'm like, your hair is going to suffer for it. Please die. You have such beautiful curls, and I love her pattern. It's just, I'm like, I'm jealous of your hair. She's like, I'm jealous of your hair. I'm like, we both are pretty. Okay, just let it go. But also, protect your hair. It's a thing, it's a whole cultural familial experience. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:55

If you know, you know. Exactly. Basically, yeah. Yeah. I love it. All right. And your books are spicy. One I'm interested in for book two. It's got the enemies with benefits. Oh my god, yes. Okay, tell me a bit about that.

SPEAKER_00 29:11

That's my new favorite trope. Enemies with benefits. It's like I hate you, but I can't stop it myself. So we're just gonna do it and you're gonna shut up. They just have so much tension. And one of my other favorite parts is when they're just arguing. They're just going at it. They're just like, but Tristan says something like each argument bullets, and they're just and then at some point, Lila's like, oh my god, either shut the fuck up or fuck. Fuck or shut the fuck up. You guys need to just do one of the both, because this is driving me crazy. So there's definitely way more sex

Why Enemies with Benefits is the Superior Trope

SPEAKER_00 29:50

in that than there is in roaming holiday. Okay. And it had to be because that was part of the core of their start and their relationship. And I had to find a way, because the thing is, I did not step into writing explicit scenes right away. Fumbled Love has no explicit scenes. And then Roaming Holiday was my first book with an explicit scene. And so then I had to jump to a book where there was gonna be a lot of explicit scenes. So that was definite adjustment. I read a lot of smut, I'll read it, but writing it, I don't use as those explicit words. There's many different levels to it. There's like euphemisms, and then you can use the more just the Roshi words, just holding no nothing back. But I found that wasn't my comfort style, but I still wanted it to be there. I don't know. I think I did a good job. But I thankfully found a way to have this sex montage. They are at the garden together or during the week and they hide whatever they're doing on their own time, and then they're fucking on the weekends. And so I was trying to make time pass, and I had to put three sex scenes into one. Three weeks worth of sex into one scene. I love the way that I ended up doing it. They do the same path. He comes to the front door and then they start there, and then they go there, and then they end up in the bedroom. And so I was able to, in those spots where they end up, make a week pass between each of those spots, and able to get that point across without having to stop the story every week to have a sex scene. It was an interesting way to find a path to including those scenes, but not making it overwhelming. That is just adding it, just to add it and to still make their story steamy and sexy, but just not overwhelming or too much.

SPEAKER_01 31:46

From a craft perspective, was there anything that you did to help you adjust to writing more sex scenes? I'm always curious about like how people hone their craft on that type of stuff.

SPEAKER_00 31:58

Yeah. So in those cases when I'm like specifically studying them, I will find a book typically on my shelf so I can open it up and and I'll read their specific sex scenes and I'll analyze it basically. I'll take a point of the words that they used, how they describe things. There's also I found a smutosaurus or something online. I don't know. So it's humbler or something. But it has all of the just the different ways that people describe things. And I also got the book, I think it's something like How I Give You My Body or something by Diana Gobaldin, the author of Outlander. I have my own thoughts about that book, but I like the way that it wrote the sex because she doesn't write it too explicitly, but it's still there enough to be like, oh, that's a sexy book. You know what I mean? And that was the level of it that I wanted. Not to say that the more explicit is one way or more muted is a better way. It's just that was my own preference. They're always the last scenes I write during drafting. It'll just be it's like sex scene here. I have to go back and add it, just add it in brackets. And I have to figure out I truly try I do the best I can to like bridge myself between it. So it's not my personal experience, like whatsoever. So that was like another unexpected thing. It was just suddenly felt really vulnerable. And I felt like I was like, the world was looking at it, was like, I need to lock that door real quick and really make it its own character and its own force of life and not reflective of myself.

SPEAKER_01 33:46

Yeah, that's really interesting. I'm yeah, I'm always curious on like how people hone their craft, but also when it comes to writing sex scenes, I think every author does it so uniquely and differently in how they map it out. Okay, so you have you say there's two more books for this series. Let's talk about that real quick.

SPEAKER_00 34:06

I can I am officially over that threshold where I can just say who the rest of the books

Looking Ahead: Mafia Romance and Second Chances in Romeo

SPEAKER_00 34:12

are. Um, but if you have not read Royal Pain, you won't know them. But that's okay. The next book is Romeo, who is Tristan's best friend. He grew up with Romeo in London. And it is very much, it's a dark romance, but it's a really it's the darkest book that I'll that I'll have written. These books take on the pink, the blue, and the fun, and the freely. And this still has that kind of romantic element, but it's there's definitely more sinister stuff. I try not to be too gory though. He is the enforcer for his mafia family, he's so secretive about everything. Romeo is just a locked book. And he meets Andy when he's 17 before he joins and is initiated and is trained into tortured and enforced to become this enforcer for his family. But before that, before his innocence is basically gone, he meets Andy at school who is reeling from the loss of her mother. And her father brings her to London or where his job is, and they meet each other and they just become best friends completely. There's always that in the back of Spanish class, there's the nerds, and then there's the bad guys who sit in the back of the Spanish class and they meet. So that's how that happened. That was a dynamic that I really liked and is reminiscent of my own time in high school. Nothing that specifically happened, but it's just that dynamic of the nerds being friends with the guys who got the tattoos, and like, why are you in high school with a tattoo? But so that type of thing. I love that dynamic. It's very interesting. It's this kind of protective type of thing, but they just fall in love with each other and it's just like their first love. But they finally run into each other after 13-ish years, and they just can't stay away. I like to describe it as Love in Other Words by Christina Lauren, but make it mafia. So it has this dramatic, soul-crushing, soul-consuming romance that they just can't stay away from, and it's set in Sicily, so it's like we're going back to that island old time type of romance setting. And it's just got this tragic tone to it, and them just fighting for their second chance together. So it's very angsty. And then the last book will be Danny or Danica, who is Tristan's sister, but we don't know what happened to her. And you'll find out what happened to her. I know exactly what happens in her story, A, B, C. Like it's I have to physically outline it, but I know everything that's gonna happen in Danny's story, and I'm really excited to share more about that. But right now I'm having fun with Romeo's story. I'm just taking my time with it and living mentally in Sicily.

SPEAKER_01 37:08

So definitely looking forward to that. Okay, so for people who are like, yes, I need more and I want to read these books, where can they find you, get to know you, buy your books, etc.?

SPEAKER_00 37:19

Yes. So I sell books directly from my website as well, which is themarinahill.com because Marina Hill was taken. So the Marina Hill, that's not me being pompous, okay? Not the. It's just that Marina Hill was taken. Themarinahill.com. I sell all of my books there, and they're all be signed and with some awesome swag. And they're also found on Kindle Unlimited or anywhere else other books are sold? Amazon, unfortunately. And where else? Steamulet, Kiss and Tail. Other bookstore beltellers. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:57

Perfect. And then what is your favorite platform for social media that you if you want listeners to engage with you? What is that platform?

SPEAKER_00 38:05

I am most active on Instagram, which is marinahill.docx, like a Microsoft document file. So that's what I'm named after.

SPEAKER_01 38:16

So love it. Awesome. And I will make sure that I have links for all that in the show notes and the YouTube description for anyone doing other things as they're listening to us. Marina, this was so much fun. Thank you so much for being on.

SPEAKER_00 38:30

Thank you so much for having me. I had the best time ever.