Keeping a blog has proven to be pointless. But I do enjoy seeing into an author’s brain a bit when I’m trolling the internet as reader-me. So, in that spirit, I thought I might make some greater effort of my own.

The quick intro that’s more than the ubiquitous “about” page is that I started writing as Rocklyn in late 2016 after “real life” went kaboom in a chain reaction of spectacularly devastating ways. Nearly a decade later and I’ve finally reached a point where I say “It’s been an adventure.” Which is indicative of truly jaw-dropping progress.

I write short books, with the spicy parts lovingly written out in full detail, using coarse language. Which does include the sparing use of the See You Next Tuesday acronym. If that word is on your trigger list– now you know.

Stories are pretty light-hearted and a little cheesy, to be honest. I keep aiming for “over-the-top” but I’m more like a good latte pour– sitting right on top without flowing over.

Reader-me loves OTT but author-me has a really hard time letting it go. I’m always like, “That is just too ridiculous!” Some stories are more OTT than others.

As of 2023, I’m all-in with the instalove sub-genre. That means short, steamy, love-at-first-sight contemporary stories. I still have a hard time avoiding that third-act break up: characters over think things, they get insecure, sometimes there are actual bad guys.

I like my bad guys dead. I utterly loathe books where the antagonist is truly awful and things just end up hunky-dory at the end. Nope. Not gonna happen in a Rocklyn Ryder book: abusive family member? Maybe unalive– definitely never going to be in the characters’ lives again. Bully? We are not going to be friends in the end– not until they do a metric F*!K ton of personal work…and grovel.

That’s also a good indicator that I’m not likely to write bully romance at any time soon. The closest might be a second chance/later in life scenario where someone was a jerk in the past because they were busy being stupid…but got over it.

Reader-me is a sucker for mountain man romance. Real life-me is also a sucker for a mountain man. Beard? Boots? Flannel? Is that an axe in your hand? Oops! My clothes seem to have disintegrated.

I like my romance heroes rough around the edges, with callouses on their hands. Mountain men, cowboys, blue collar hotties– I am not a billionaire romance kinda gal. (But my BFF is, so never say never when you’re looking through my catalogue of books.)

I also hate hate hate book hangover. I want to close the book, sigh peacefully, and go back to my life. I don’t want to spend days or weeks mentally stuck in a book. I especially don’t want to lose those days or weeks stuck trying to “fix” a book that made me insanely angry for any number of reasons.

I try really hard not to do that to my readers; but if I do trigger you, the (probably) good news is that the books are short. Hopefully you didn’t lose much time to it and you’ll get over it really fast.