Lyssa Kay Adams talks secret notebooks, challenging gender stereotypes and dreaming of Peaky Blinders dinner parties!

Have you always wanted to be a writer? What do you love most about your job?

Always! My family still likes to laugh about how as a child, I would never leave the house without a notebook and a pencil even before I could read. That’s a pattern that continued all my life. I had secret notebooks hidden everywhere all through college. I spent almost 20 years as a newspaper journalist, but even then, I was still scratching in notebooks in my free time. I finally turned those scribbles into real books, and the best part about being an author now is when a reader contacts me to say that my book touched them in some way. Book people are the best people!

Do you have the most fun creating your heroes or your heroines?

All characters are fun for me to create. I love the complexity of developing them from the most basic details into fully layered people with histories and hang-ups, goals and fears. One of the most rewarding parts about the Bromance series is challenging gender stereotypes in my character development.

Do you have a favourite hero or heroine from your books or by any other author?

Oh, yes. Dean Robillard from Natural Born Charmer by Susan Elizabeth Phillips will always be the standard by which I measure a swoony hero.

Who are the authors you read for pleasure?

Even though I write contemporary romantic comedies, my favorite books to read for pleasure are almost always historicals! I will set aside everything on the day a new Tessa Dare book comes out, and I’ve recently fallen in love with Chanel Cleeton. I also adore everything that Jennifer Robson writes. But on the complete opposite spectrum, I’m also a huge fan of Janet Evanovich. Her Stephanie Plum series never fails to make me literally laugh out loud. My all-time favorite, though? Susan Elizabeth Phillips. Nobody writes a love story like her.

If you could take only three essentials with you to a desert island what would they be?

A book, a dog, and Excedrin Migraine!

Who would be on your dream dinner party guest list?

I know I should say something really lofty like Michelle Obama and former U.S. President Jimmy Carter – and don’t get me wrong, I would love to be a fly on the wall of a conversation between them – but really I just kind of want to hang out with the cast of Peaky Blinders and listen to Tom Hardy tell Cillian Murphy over and over that he has starlings, mate, while he passes the salt.

What are your guilty pleasures?

Sometimes on Sundays, I like to tell my family that I have a ton of laundry to fold, but really I’m just sitting on my bed and watching cheesy end-of-the-world movies.