And the strange thing is, I didn\u2019t set out to write \u201cthe book.\u201d I never do. I wrote\u00a0Forged in Deception<\/em>\u00a0because I needed a break from contemporary romance, because a song wouldn\u2019t let me go. Along the way, Francesca and Valentina appeared and demanded space. I stayed with Penelope and Lucia and learned them first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But when I wrote Weight<\/em>, something shifted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was a pressure cooker. Intense. Obsessive. It felt different while I was writing it, and when I reread it, I had that rare, disorienting moment of recognition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is the kind of book I would have devoured. The kind I would have reread and recommended and thought about for years. I hadn\u2019t planned it. I hadn\u2019t even consciously aimed for it. But somehow, I\u2019d arrived there. And maybe I\u2019ve been circling this all along.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When I wrote my first novel at fourteen\u2014a vampire love story in German\u2014I told everyone the same thing: they just happen to be vampires. That isn’t the point. The point is living forever. What that does to you. To love. To memory. To grief. To who you are as a person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The engine never mattered. The exploration did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Decades later, I finally see the pattern. I write rupture and restoration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The plot scaffolding changes\u2014politics, crime, magic, courts, fake contracts\u2014but underneath it, I always return to the same questions:<\/p>\n\n\n\n What happens when two women who are already cracked collide?<\/p>\n\n\n\n What do you choose when power and love cannot coexist cleanly?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Can you surrender without annihilating yourself?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Can you be seen fully\u2014and have someone stay?<\/p>\n\n\n\n I don\u2019t write plot-first stories. I never have. I write women who must bleed before they can soften. I write sacrifice without self-erasure. I write competent, controlled women who must dismantle themselves to love honestly. I write restoration, not escape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This series forced me to accept that. More importantly, it forced me to stop apologizing for it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I write high-stakes emotional sovereignty romances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The engine changes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The rupture doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I love all the books I\u2019ve written. I would have loved them as a reader,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,36,13],"tags":[37,24],"class_list":["post-1968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forged-in-deception","category-the-weight-of-the-fall","category-thoughts-on-writing","tag-obsession","tag-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sabrinablaum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sabrinablaum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sabrinablaum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sabrinablaum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sabrinablaum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1968"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sabrinablaum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1968\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1971,"href":"https:\/\/sabrinablaum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1968\/revisions\/1971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sabrinablaum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sabrinablaum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sabrinablaum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/sabrinablaum.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/IMG_1013-689x1024.jpg\")