Hail to the Badass Romance Writer

I don’t typically write about politics in this space because this space is reserved for reflecting on writing and books (and I will talk about writing and books, in a moment, honestly). But in light of the attempted insurrection at the U.S. Capitol last week, well, how can we not talk politics?

More specifically, I want to talk about the badass romance writer who may well have saved America.

Have I got you scratching your head, wondering what the hell a romance writer has to do with the current worrisome state of affairs in America? Well, scratch no more, because I’m talking about Georgia’s Stacey Abrams.

Abrams has written eight suspenseful romance novels under the pen name Selena Montgomery. She is also a Yale alumnus, a lawyer and a politician who barely lost the Georgia governor’s race two years ago. She’s an activist and a writer, too.

When she lost the governor’s election by less than 50,000 votes, what did she do? Did she whine and cry and plot revenge? No. She got to work.

In a recent interview about her 2018 loss, Abrams said this: “And the thing is, if I had fought back and said, ‘I am going to contest this election and make myself governor,’ then everyone who loved me and stood with me would have thought, ‘Well, this is about her fight.’ My responsibility was instead to focus on the right to vote and not my right to be governor. I had no right to be governor, but I have an obligation to do the work that I said I would do if I were governor.”

Stacey Abrams went to work at the grassroots level getting black and disenfranchised voters registered to vote and then, of course, actually voting. And her efforts were amidst great challenges, namely, a lot of obfuscation and intentional voter suppression at the highest levels. Abrams’ efforts resulted in getting the vote out for Joe Biden in Georgia, which helped make Biden president. And then she did it again Jan. 6 in the runoff for the two senate seats in her state, which have now gone Democratic.

I’d like to argue that without the efforts of this fiction writer, Trump would likely have been re-elected and the Senate would have continued under a Republican majority. So yes. Stacey Abrams helped save America. She still wants to run for office. And she’s still writing fiction. A new political thriller by her will be out this spring.

“The act of writing is integral to who I am,” she told the Washington Post in 2018. “I’m a writer, a politician, a tax attorney, a civic leader and an entrepreneur. I am proud of what I’ve accomplished.”

Admirably, she’s not only unapologetic about being a fiction writer, she’s proud of it. Including being proud of writing romances. “Telling a well-crafted story is hard. Full stop,” she said in the same interview. “Regardless of genre, good writing is good writing. Romance is one of the oldest forms of storytelling, and I’m honoured to be in the company of extraordinary writers.”

So the next time you feel the urge to look down on romance writers or to make a disparaging joke about romance novels, think of Stacey Abrams. And, oh yeah. Think about this: Don’t F with us romance writers! 😉