Haddonfield resident Kate Hively has been writing for as long as she can remember.
She has dabbled in literary writing, creative nonfiction and short stories, but it was only in January of last year that she dared to write a romance.
After bypassing National Novel Writing Month in November of 2022, Hively and another mom-and-writer friend teamed up for the challenge of writing a novel in one month on their own. That month challenged Hively to work and think in ways she hadn’t before, from plotting the entire course of the novel to writing a chapter a day to creating a PowerPoint to help visualize the characters.
“In a lot of ways, it allowed me to not be my own worst enemy,” she recalled. “I had to not overthink it. I just had to physically sit in the chair and write the words, and that’s something I never had to do (before), day after day after day, no breaks for an entire month.
“I thought that it would be really tiresome or feel like a chore,” Hively added, “and I was pleasantly surprised to see that because of that consistency and keeping focused on the story the whole time, it actually made the writing easier.”
Thus, “For You I’d Break” was born.
The book is Hively’s debut romance novel and is published under a pen name, Hannah Jordan, to help separate her other creative work from the writing she does for the genre. It was launched on July 17, her 20th wedding anniversary.
“It was really like my 20th anniversary gift to him,” Hively said of her husband, Dr. Jeffrey Lane. In the dedication, she acknowledges that everything she knew of true love, she learned from him.
The story follows Rowan, a woman who returns home after her two-year marriage ends and finds herself in an accident. She is treated by Caleb “Cal” Cardoso, the town’s newest physical therapist and former football star, who had never noticed her in high school.
After his reputation is purposefully tanked online by his last romancit hookup, Cardoso can’t afford to let Rowan switch to another practitioner, or he could lose his job.
“I knew I wanted to do a small town, I knew I wanted it to be a second chance,” Hively shared. “I had this idea of a wallflower from high school back home and ending up with the guy that she would never have dated in high school. So it had some elements of that.”
“For You I’d Break” is the first in a three-part series of books, each set in the same fictional town of Peace Falls, Virginia. Hively grew up in the Blue Ridge Mountains of that state. Once the first book took off, it spurred Hively to write the other two in quick secession. She allowed herself a six-week period to write rather than a month.
“The premise of the whole three-book series is that in the aftermath of pretty tragic car accident that the three male leads are in, it includes one of their four friends,” she explained. “It kind of came out of unfortunate personal experience, of losing someone too young in a car crash.
“Even though it was romance, I kept finding I was using it in an artistic way, bringing up things from my own life, which I was surprised to do.”
Hively acknowledges the many people who helped hold herself accountable to writing. From her weekly Zoom meetings during COVID were writers Gerri Mahn and James Carpenter, members of the South Jersey Writer’s Group, Mentor Jannie Watt is from the Writers of America’s Romance Author Mentorship Program.
Her advice to writers looking to improve their craft? Find people who will hold you accountable.
“Some writers write in a vacuum, but for me, it’s finding people to hold you accountable to put your butt in the chair and write,” Hively noted. ” … Part of this process, and I can’t stress this enough, is accepting who I am as a writer.
“Because I do have the degrees and my friends are winning PEN/Faulkner Awards (for fiction),” she continued, “I thought I needed to be a literary writer. I thought that’s the expectation that I had, to write something that was avant garde or crafted in a very specific way. And what I’ve come to find out is that I enjoy writing romance.
” … It really was coming to terms with the fact that this is the writer I want to be, and not the writer I thought everyone expected me to be.”
In spite of the challenges she may have faced while writing and revising the book, Hively’s biggest hurdle was owning up to writing a steamy book.
“I guess I just got to the point where I was like, ‘You know what, I’m proud of this book, and I like this book, and I’m really excited about it. And I really don’t care what people think,” she said.
Though Hively kept the book hidden in the beginning, she has publicly owned her story on social media and also told her family about it, though her mom is not allowed to read it. She was surprised by the positive response she received.
Hively will be one of six authors partaking in a book talk and book signing in celebration of Romance Bookstore Day at Inkwood Books on Saturday, Aug. 17, at 7 p.m.
