MILWAUKEE — Love is in the air in Brew City, and no, it’s not Valentine’s Day.
In a few days, romance lovers will descend upon Milwaukee for the first-time Romance Con — also known as RomCon. The two-day convention — from Sept. 6 to 7 — will feature over 100 romance authors and seeks to “celebrate the empowerment, passion and creativity that is at the heart of the romance genre and its community.”
Located at the Baird Center, book fans can choose from over a dozen panels to check out, meet their favorite authors in a signing hall, shop books and book-themed merchandise, attend an array of meetups from Spoonies to LGBTQ+ to sports romance lovers, lounge in a reading room, enjoy craft night, chow down at an author dinner and dance the weekend away at the Main Character Masquerade Ball.
One of those authors is the best-seller Amy Spalding.
From YA to adult romance
Spalding, who is a St. Louis native currently residing in Los Angeles, has published an array of books that span the sub-genres of romance reads.
“I come from the YA world; I wrote young adult literature before I came to romance — well, my YA was pretty romance-forward, but still,” she explained.
Spalding found her passion for romance writing during the pandemic. She was at home, waiting to hear back about a young adult novel she had recently finished.
“I thought, ‘Well I don’t want to write another YA novel. I don’t even know if I sold this one.’ It feels like almost a void of continuing to write them and putting them into a pile,” she recounted.
But one thing that got her through the pandemic was her romance e-books.
“I had been reading a ton of romance because of those guaranteed happy endings were really nice when nothing in the world was guaranteed or happy. It felt like that was my emotional blanket, was romance e-books. So I thought, ‘Well, why not write one? And literally no one has to know about this. You’re home every day. You’re not chatting with people. Your agent doesn’t have to know. If it’s terrible, you can just delete the file.’
“As I worked on it, I just loved it. I was falling in love with getting to write adult characters. I love writing YA, I love all of those discoveries and first times, but there’s something about writing adults who already have experiences or already have some baggage who have jobs. It’s not just that they have future goals, they have things they have already accomplished. That was really exciting getting to shift my focus and writing characters like that,” she said.
Spotlighting LGBTQ+ love stories
Spalding’s debut adult romance book was the first of the series “Out in Hollywood.”
“For Her Consideration” follows a scriptwriter who falls in love with a movie star. Spalding’s leading ladies are not only part of the LGBTQ+ community, one of them is plus-size.
The second book in the series, “At Her Service” and the third book, “On Her Terms,” which comes out in 2025, also highlight queer love stories. A fourth installment of the series is scheduled to be released in 2026. Each book is set in the same universe, bringing back beloved characters while also introducing readers to new ones.
In her new book, “On Her Terms,” one of the main characters is from “For Her Consideration.” Spalding said readers had asked about that character, so she’s hoping they’ll be excited to read more about them. The other main character, however, will be brand new for everyone.
“It’s very much about coming out a little later in life, like in your mid-30s, and trying to figure out what is this life you’re actually really wanting and how to go after it for real. I loved getting to write it,” she said. “I normally do not write a lot of coming out stories because I’m normally like, ‘Yeah, yeah, let’s get to the plot. Again, let’s get to the shenanigans and the fun.’ But I really had a good time writing this book.”
The idea came to her a few years ago. She saw a book announcement about “someone who came out later in life, at 17.”
“I was like, ‘17 is later in life now?’ It made me feel extremely old,” Spalding said.
While she is glad there has been a cultural shift that has allowed many kids to know their identities, she wanted to acknowledge that people can still make discoveries about themselves through the course of their life.
“I don’t think 17 is later in life,” she said. “It made me start thinking about what it is actually like when you come out later, especially when you kind of know that about yourself, but you’re not sharing it publicly yet or you haven’t had experiences. I feel like that’s something that a lot of people talk about, but I was really excited to write a story exploring that.”
For Spalding, “On Her Terms” is where what she loves about the YA world and the romance world collide.
“I was writing about firsts in YA and then in adult it’s people with a lot of experience, and here I kind of got to do both at once. Because it’s someone having a lot of early experiences in her identity, but she’s still an adult with a history and knowledge. It was kind of fun to marry those two ideas,” Spalding explained.
Choosing to write queer characters was a no-brainer for Spalding. She even did that in her young adult novels.
“A few books into my writing career, I really wanted to write queer characters at the forefront,” she said. “Back then, there were not a ton of books about LGBTQ+ characters that were really happy. In a lot of the books — even the ones that got happy endings — the kids really suffered. There’s a lot of bullying and trauma and violence. [Today], things have gotten so much better in literature. There are so many kinds of books. There are books that address serious issues, but there are also just books with shenanigans and good times, which is much more where I want to be.”
She knew she wanted to write “fluffy fun books,” so why not include queer characters that meant a lot to her?
Her readers loved them and she even started to gain new readers, too. LGBTQ+ characters have been a staple of Spalding’s stories ever since.
Another staple of her stories, especially her adult romance series, is joy.
“I think writing joy can be so [fun] … It’s something you can read without stress because you know everything’s going to work out,” Spalding said. “But, for so many years — I’m in my 40s — and for so many years there were not stories about queer people in the media, television, film, etcetera. There’s not a ton of mainstream stories where you could guarantee a happy ending for a queer couple. It’s changed so much and getting to be part of that means the world to me.”
Joy for everybody
Spalding also wanted to highlight people with larger bodies in her writings. They deserve happy endings, too, she said.
Actually, Spalding said in real life, they are getting happy endings. She thought that should be represented in literature. She explained that plus-size people were not only deserving of love, but they were good enough and desirable, too.
“I think sometimes romance can do really great things about centering women, centering women’s desires, and you know, people of all genders, too. But there’s something really special I found getting to see, in a culture that is often seen through the male gaze, getting to have women, nonbinary people, etcetera, as the leads. For me, getting to write fat women, plus-size women, where their size is not some big sadness in their life, where they are desired and loved, and seen as beautiful, it means a lot to me,” she said.
Nina Rice, a character in “For Her Consideration,” is comfortable with her curves.
“It is fiction, technically — these stories are fiction — but there are so many women, so many people out there like this. And yet, so often literature is like about really thin, white straight people. The world is just so much more interesting and diverse than that. I tell joyful queer stories because I believe that that is happening all around us. I feel the same way about plus-size characters. They are getting happy endings in real life. There’s no reason we have to treat this as ‘Oh wow, look at you doing this activism.’ Like, sure, but also this is real life. I love getting to celebrate that,” she said.
Romance Con and beyond
Spalding said she expects to talk about all of these topics and more during the convention this weekend. She is sitting on three panels: One on sapphic romance, one on plus-size romance and one on shifting from young adult to adult genres.
She said all of the topics at the convention are pretty specific and cover topics such as mental health in writing, the hockey romance craze, spicy reads, Black love stories and more.
Spalding said she’s excited that everyone attending panels during the convention will be excited to take a deep dive into the topics at hand.
“I was unprepared for just how enthusiastic and passionate these readers are,” Spalding said. “It’s just so exciting getting to meet them in person, getting to engage with them, getting to meet readers who are already fans but also people who get excited because they like what you said on a panel or they like the idea of your book and haven’t even read you yet.”
She hopes that all of these topics mean something to readers and impact them in a positive way.
“Specifically with the panels I am on and some of the other panels that are happening at the same time, these stories centering love, centering pleasure, centering finding a happy ending and being the best version of yourself, they are for all kinds of characters — across gender, across sexuality, across size, across race — and I love being in a place that celebrates that. Hopefully, readers of all types are going to get to see someone they can really relate to in a story,” she said. “Any time I’m reading a book and I have that feeling of really connecting with how someone sees the world is how I see the world, I think it’s one of the greatest things about reading. Romance can really give that to so many people.”
Romance writers, according to Spalding, share that enthusiasm with readers.
“We’re all in this together. We love these stories. We love these happy endings. We love these tropes …” she said. So much of being a writer is being behind a computer, alone, and just typing away, and knowing someone’s gonna read it in like two years. It can be really isolating, so it’s nice to be in a room where we’re all doing the thing together.”
In addition to RomCon, Spalding is headlining an event at Milwaukee’s Boswell Book Company on Thursday, Sept. 5, at 6:30 p.m.
“I think it will be a really fun way to launch the weekend and really get into my stuff specifically before being part of bigger panels where I’m also wanting to talk about other people’s books that I am fans of too,” she said.
Her event at Boswell will be an hour-long Q&A style session. Readers can dive into her books, her themes or anything that comes to mind. Registration for the free event is available, here.
Tickets for Romance Con start at $79 and are available, here.
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