Melissa Ferguson Pulls Back the Curtain on the World of Publishing in 'The Perfect Rom-Com'

In The Perfect Rom-Com, bestselling author, Melissa Ferguson, writes a quirky, romantic comedy based on her own experiences as a writer. The story follows Bryony Page, an aspiring writer, who unexpectedly becomes a ghostwriter for Amelia Benedict, a well-known rom-com author. Along the way, she meets a literary agent named Jack Sterling who is helping Bryony to sell her own novel, and their friendship soon turns into a romance. For Ferguson, creating a great rom-com involves not just the romantic aspect of a relationship, but also includes the internal and external growth of the two love interests. She explained, “In romance you’re not dealing with high stakes scenario… so you’re creating conflict that sometimes, unfortunately, comes from miscommunication… I think it’s super frustrating when there’s that miscommunication that kind of lags on… I like quirky scenarios that are rom-com-y scenarios where the focus is so much on that internal development. She’s always gotten external motivation that’s really going, right? …and then she’s also got this internal growth that she’s working through… and then there’s the romance aspect, and then there’s maybe his external motivation, right? He has his flaws that you start seeing that [he] needs to work through, and then you have the quirky scenario… and the less you have of the comedic aspect… the more it’s going to be focused just on the romance, and to me that’s boring.”

Ferguson, who got her start in writing by attending a writer’s conferences, highly encourages all aspiring writers to participate in writing conferences. Her advice, “Get yourself to a writer’s conference as soon as you ever possibly think, ‘Wouldn’t it be kind of fun to write a book? I wonder if I could.’ Just go ahead and go, start early because there’s so many workshops and proposals… There’s so much to writing that is beyond just writing, but also in commercial publishing there are a lot of rules to it that you may not know that you would learn at conferences, so don’t be afraid to get out there to a good writer’s conference and learn and get connected, meet other people…” And lastly and most importantly, “Just keep writing… other authors kept saying that, but to me I didn’t really quite get it, but just keep writing… write the next book!”