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2 days Ago By Emma Specter
Despite the efforts of bookstores like Los Angeles’s The Ripped Bodice and San Diego’s Meet Cute Romance Bookshop , stories that center romantic love don’t always get their due as the cerebral, witty works of art that they so often are. Author Alexandra “Zan” Romanoff’s most recent novella, Big Fan (from the recently launched romance publisher 831 Stories ), most definitely falls into that category, telling the story of a hardworking political strategist who reunites with her former boy-band crush. Vogue spoke to Romanoff about taking romance novels seriously, writing genuinely compelling crushes, and why she thinks Ryan Gosling would be perfect in a big-screen adaptation of her book.
Vogue : What does the process of releasing this book feel like, compared to your previous novels? Zan Romanoff: Well, my last book came out in late March of 2020, so that in particular was a very tough release. You know, in the week running up to it, instead of planning parties and buying outfits, I was stocking up on hand sanitizer like everyone else. To get to have those parties and see people in person has just been such an incredible experience.
There’s been a lot of excitement and energy behind it in a way I’ve never seen before, so that’s been very, very cool. What drew you to set Big Fan within the world of US politics? Big Fan is really a collaboration between me and my publisher 831 Stories ; this is the first book they were releasing, and they actually had kind of a sketch for the book before I came on to write it. That was sort of their original pitch, that they wanted to have a political aspect to this book as kind of an announcement of who 831 is.
I really loved it. I have been very involved in politics in the last handful of years, and I think people often talk about romance being a political genre, which it is, in a way, because it’s about prioritizing love and pleasure for women, and sometimes it’s about women having bodily autonomy—although not always. I understand the instinct that we all have about politics and romance feeling opposite from one another, but I really don’t think that they are, right? People have all kinds of experiences, and it’s not antithetical to have an intellect and also a heart and whatever body parts are involved in a romance novel.
What’s the secret to writing a really good, consuming crush? For me, the secret to writing a good crush is longing—that’s always the thing that I look for in a love story, and the thing that really does it for me is that feeling of wanting something so badly and also feeling distance from it. The emotion that I default to is that feeling of looking at someone across the room and wanting to be where they are. The other big trick for me is being specific; I talk about this a lot in terms of sex, because it’s very easy to just sort of be like, “He had a hot body and she had a hot body, and they wanted to touch each other’s hot bodies.
” But this question I have had has been about the person inside of that body; you know, it’s not just “I want to touch her arm,” it’s like, “I want to hear her laugh and touch her arm and smell her smell. I want her to tell me that joke that she tells in the way that only she can.” I think that feeling of being specifically obsessed with one person is really what turns it from sort of lustful ogling into that overpowering crush.
What are some of your favorite literary romances? One fantasy novel that has a great romance is Kristin Cashore’s Graceling . And more recently, I loved Lio Min’s Beating Heart Baby , which I reviewed for the LA Times when it came out. How would you dream-cast Charlie and Maya? I really thought about it the other day, and this is never going to happen, but Ryan Gosling would be the perfect Charlie.
I mean, he’s the most talented and funny and wonderful actor, he’s unbelievably charming and so good looking, but he also has a Disney backstory, so he could handle the singing scenes. For Maya, I don’t have as strong of a feeling, but she’s very self-confident and self-assured. I would want it to be clear immediately that when she walks onscreen, you can’t take your eyes off her.
You know, she’s not a beautiful tiny child model or a 25-year-old girl playing 35—she is a woman. This conversation has been edited and condensed..
