The Rom-Commers

by Katherine Center

Genres: Women's Fiction; Romantic Comedy

Synopsis

Featuring beautiful spray-painted edges with vibrant designed endpapers.

She’s rewriting his love story. But can she rewrite her own?

Emma Wheeler desperately longs to be a screenwriter. She’s spent her life studying, obsessing over, and writing romantic comedies—good ones! That win contests! But she’s also been the sole caretaker for her kind-hearted dad, who needs full-time care. Now, when she gets a chance to re-write a script for famous screenwriter Charlie Yates—The Charlie Yates! Her personal writing god!—it’s a break too big to pass up.


Emma’s younger sister steps in for caretaking duties, and Emma moves to L.A. for six weeks for the writing gig of a lifetime. But what is it they say? Don’t meet your heroes? Charlie Yates doesn’t want to write with anyone—much less “a failed, nobody screenwriter.” Worse, the romantic comedy he’s written is so terrible it might actually bring on the apocalypse. Plus! He doesn’t even care about the script—it’s just a means to get a different one green-lit. Oh, and he thinks love is an emotional Ponzi scheme.

But Emma’s not going down without a fight. She will stand up for herself, and for rom-coms, and for love itself. She will convince him that love stories matter—even if she has to kiss him senseless to do it. But . . . what if that kiss is accidentally amazing? What if real life turns out to be so much . . . more real than fiction? What if the love story they’re writing breaks all Emma’s rules—and comes true?

Release date: June 11, 2024

Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

Print pages: 291

Sample

One

LOGAN SCOTT CALLED just as I was making dinner, and I almost didn’t answer because my dad and I were singing along to ABBA’s greatest hits. There were not too many people I’d interrupt ABBA for—but yes, fine, Logan Scott was one of them.

Logan was my former high school boyfriend, who still felt guilty about the way we broke up, and he dealt with that guilt by sending me job opportunities.

Not the worst way to handle it.

It was the penance he paid for his unscathed life.

Though nobody’s life is truly unscathed, I guess.

His less-scathed life, maybe.

He was a manager. In Hollywood. For screenwriters. A very glamorous job.

Technically, he was my manager—although I’d never made him any money. I was kind of like his pro bono case.

It was fine, he always insisted. I’d pay off eventually.

I’d placed in two different screenwriting contests because Logan insisted I submit. He got me in the door freelancing for Variety. And all those movie reviews I got paid minimum wage to do? Courtesy of him.

He just kept sending me work.

I told him to stop feeling guilty. I was fine. But I didn’t exactly mean it. Not if that guilt of his was going to keep paying my bills.

Some of them, anyway.

All to say, on this particular night, Logan had a doozy of an offer for me.

“Emma,” he said. “I’m going to need you to sit down.”

“I’m flipping pancakes-for-dinner right now,” I said. My sister, Sylvie, was coming home from college, so I was making her favorite meal.

“You will definitely drop them all when you hear this,” Logan said, like he’d pictured me juggling pancakes instead.

I covered the in-progress stack with foil, turned off the music, and gave my dad a “one minute” finger from across the room.

My dad nodded and gave a hearty thumbs-up, like Do whatever you need to do.

“I’m ready,” I said to Logan.

“Are you literally sitting down?”


Copyright © 2024 by Katherine Center