UNF*CKABLE!

By ROn Evans

Local author, Lucy H. Delaney has just released her eighth book, UNF*CKABLE! A 90 Day Dating

Guide to Long-Lasting Love. As you can most likely discern from the title, Delaney turns her gaze toward the hit or miss (to say the least) world of modern dating with this latest effort. It also marks the author’s first foray into long form non-fiction. I recently chatted with Delaney about her adventures in writing, dating, researching, publishing and...more writing.

Tell us a little about yourself and when and how you got started down the path of writing.

I like to tell people, who I am depends on who you ask. I have my hand in a lot of different buckets or wear a lot of different hats on my head, or whatever cliched term best fits a hyperactive family-focused do-gooder that likes to be outdoors when at all possible. Most recently, my life has centered around caring for my ninety-one year old grandmother who has mid-stage dementia.

I’ve always loved the written word and since my elementary school years have found it easier to communicate with the written word rather than spoken words. I think this is related to having ADHD. In intense situations, be they good, bad or just plain exciting, words get jumbled up with all the energy and emotion inside me and speaking clearly is a challenge. When writing, I have time to craft and create what I want to communicate in the way I want it to be received.

What was your first completed book and when/how did you publish it?

Ahhhhh my first...You always remember your first don’t you? My first completed book, Waiting on Justin, was actually the second book in my Road to Love series. I wrote it as a project with high school students at the Tech Center here in Wenatchee. The students in my JAG class gave me story ideas or subjects they wanted in it and I crafted the book to include their ideas. Each of the characters mentioned in the book has either a first or last name of one of the students in my class. I pitched the book to a publisher, they loved the story, and it was the first to be published.

I currently have eight published works; three in the Road to Love series are what I call “real-life romance” because nothing I write is simply sweet. There are triggering themes and serious social issues I bring attention to within the main characters’ love stories, but I do promise there is a “mostly” happily-ever-after at the end of each of the books in the series. Three other books are part of the Just Gia series, a coming-of-age story about, Gia Gianelli, a Leavenworth shopkeeper’s daughter. It is very dark and raw. I have a standalone, Scandalous Affair, that’s a super spicy billionaire boyfriend story (it was my best attempt at erotica, but just not a genre I think I’ll write too much in). My newest book, UNF*CKABLE! is my first non-fiction and focuses on mid-life dating in this day and age. I am about 63,000 words into my next work, it will be by far my longest story to date. I’d say it’s the truest to who I want to really be as a writer, instead of being a “who done it?” it’s more like a “who is it?” kind of story where the reader spends most of the book trying to piece together which character is which. It’ll be a fun mindbender!

Are you self-published or have you worked with an agent/agency or publishing house?

I was originally published with Booktrope, and put out the Road to Love series, Scandalous Affair and the first book in the Gia series with them. They ended up dissolving and I made the personal decision to self-publish, call me greedy but a 70% royalty of my own work sounds a lot better to me than 5-15%, which is the going rate for most publishers. I’m not opposed to working with a publisher again if it makes sense, but I’m not going to waste my time begging a publisher to take me in when I have an open market of voracious readers at my fingertips.

Talk about your writing process from start to finish - are you often thinking in terms of series or do you think one book at a time and potentially add more books later?

Hmmmmm... this is a tricky one. I suppose I think in terms of the world in which the stories live, if that makes sense. Some story ideas come to me and they’re by nature just one story. There’s not a whole lot of room within the confines of that world to do much more with it. For example, the Gia series is all about Gia. There’s no escaping her in that world. For marketing sake, I made her story into three books, but it could really be one larger all encompassing novel, either way, I can’t see expanding that world. However; the Road to Love stories are all written with more in mind. Each of those books had a “pull-out” character that readers can follow into their own story within that world. I have visions for stories with expansive worlds, which will definitely be large series works, but then again, like Scandalous, there are some ideas in this brain of mine I want to get out, or try out, but they don’t necessarily have a structure to build more books on.

Do you have a designated space(s) to write? And do you have trusted readers you can bounce things off before committing to publishing?

I am the “Riding Writer” and currently write most of my words during my Link Transit commute from Wenatchee to Leavenworth and back. Over the years I’ve written just about anywhere you can think of. I’ve had dedicated writing rooms and nooks and love having a sacred space, but in a way it’s also a little restrictive. If I get used to writing in “just” one space it’s hard to pull out my laptop and get in a few hundred words if I find some free time in a day. I feel like keeping the “space” fluid allows me the opportunity to write more, therefore, I can produce more. I will say, with the exception of my current afternoon commute writing sessions, I like to write in the morning. For the forty-minute bus ride I can get my head in the game but I’m definitely better at free-flowing ideas before the clock strikes noon for some reason.

I don’t bounce my ideas off anyone, they do enough bouncing off the grey matter in