Meet, Kiss, Repeat: Romance Series Writing

Romance-Con | Presented by Toledo Library

Hear from panelists about how they use series writing to craft worlds and characters that build on each other to keep readers intrigued.

At each program, authors will speak, followed by a question-and-answer session. This event is free, and tickets are not required.  For other Romance-Con events and offerings, visit toledolibrary.org/romance-con.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Jessica Booth writes small town, steamy Southern romance novels with loveable pets and book boyfriends that will make you swoon (even her stories make you cry a little along the way). She has published four books and has a new one slated to arrive in the world in October 2025.  Although she grew up in North Louisiana, she now resides in Southwestern Ohio with her husband, four kids, and a couple of hounds. They love to spend their time exploring parks, visiting indie bookstores, or outside digging up worms and transforming piles of sticks into castles.  

Sherelle Green, USA Today Bestselling Author, is known for her addictive, high-stakes mafia romances and the gritty empire she's built through her books. A place where ruthless antiheroes and complex heroines navigate twisted loyalties, betrayal, and forbidden passion. With a deep fascination for the darker corners of love, she dives into themes of power, lust, vulnerability, and redemption, blending suspense and sensuality to keep readers on the edge of their seats. From intricate family sagas and compelling love affairs, to thought-provoking fiction and romantic crime thrillers, her novels touch on how experiences & environment impact the way her beautifully flawed and relatable protagonists view life and love.

Abby Millsaps is an author and storyteller who’s been obsessed with writing romance since middle school. In eighth grade, she failed to qualify for the Power of the Pen State Championships because all her submissions contained the same theme: young people falling in love. #LookAtHerNow She’s best known for writing unapologetically angsty romance that causes emotional damage for her readers. Abby prides herself in writing authentic characters while weaving mental health, chronic illness, and neurodiverse representation into the fabric of her stories. 

Elle Wright is an award-winning author of edgy contemporary romance loaded with heat, humor, and scandal. Her novels feature strong, intelligent, courageous, beautiful, yet flawed, heroes and heroines of color. There was never a time when Elle wasn’t about to start a book, wasn't already deep in a book—or had just finished one. She grew up believing in the power of reading to transform, to heal, and to enhance life and love. She became a lover of all things romance after her mother convinced her take a chance and read something new. She resides in Michigan with her husband and children. 

ABOUT THE MODERATOR

Melanie Dusseau is a multi-genre writer, teacher, and scholar from Toledo, Ohio. She is the author of a poetry collection, The Body Tries Again, as well as several flash romances in Woman’s World, essays in Faculty Focus and Inside Higher Ed, and poems in journals like River Styx, Wicked Alice, DIAGRAM, and Alaska Quarterly. An associate professor of English at the University of Findlay, she teaches courses in literature, craft workshops in poetry, creative nonfiction, and genre fiction, and facilitates a yearly summer study abroad program to Ireland. She is querying a paranormal fantasy romance and remains a super fan of the genre who always has room for another great book on her TBR. You can read about her creative and scholarly projects, as well as her advocacy for the labor of human writers and artists against AI in both education and publishing, at her website.

Sensory Considerations: This program will use artificial lighting.  All speakers will use microphones.

Accessibility Details: Located on the first floor, accessed by elevator and/or stairs. All doors will feature an automatic function or be propped open prior to program start. Tile or low pile carpet throughout the building. Limited free parking is available in the attached garage. 

Please call Public Services at 419-259-5293 to request an accommodation at least two weeks prior to the program date.

Romance-Con is presented by Toledo Library, with support from Destination Toledo, the official Destination Marketing Organization promoting the Toledo, Ohio region to visitors, meeting and convention business locally, regionally, and nationwide.