Lucy Score talks about Things We Left Behind
Romance writer Lucy Score tried many jobs before finding her calling. She was a yoga instructor and a bartender, a journalist and a marketer, “and I kept getting fired,” she says. Eventually, it started to get to her: “Everybody else was doing their job. They were married, they had their kids, and they were doing all of the right things in the right order. I was just floundering around like I missed that day in high school. You know, I wasn’t there for the important ‘this is how you adult’ lesson.”
As it turned out, her version of it just looked different. Now she spends her days writing the kinds of funny, romantic novels that her many TikTok fans label #spicy as a selling point. Her mini romance empire has grown large enough that her husband runs the business side of their joint venture, That’s What She Said Publishing.
The final installment of Score’s Knockemout trilogy, “Things We Left Behind,” came out Sept. 5 after rabid anticipation online, where readers dubbed the hero, the enigmatic Lucian, “Suit Daddy” on account of his bespoke menswear.
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All three books take place in the fictional Knockemout, Va., a small town near D.C. where the characters are colorful and the gossip travels fast. Something about the quaint yet eccentric locale has struck a note with readers: According to Circana, which tracks book sales, “Things We Left Behind” sold almost four times as many print copies in its first week as the second book in the series, which was also an instant bestseller. (The newest book debuted at No. 2 on Circana’s list, though it had stiff competition: Stephen King’s “Holly.”)
Just before the release of “Things We Left Behind,” Score — a pen name she uses to protect her privacy — and I chatted over Zoom from her home in Mechanicsville, Pa., about her unconventional path to success and how the Knockemout trilogy came together.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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Q: When did you start writing?
A: I always enjoyed writing, especially when I was a little kid. Before I even knew my alphabet, I would carry a notebook around with me and just write scribbles in it. I thought that I was going to be the next Lois Lane. (I was heavily influenced by “Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman” with Dean Cain and Teri Hatcher.)
I actually went to college for journalism, but I learned very quickly that I didn’t want to write the news. I was such a light, happy person, and who knew that the news could be so dark and sad?
Q: How did you get into romance?
A: I’ve been reading romance novels since I was 13. I started stealing them off my mom’s shelf. The first book that I remember reading is still one of my all-time favorites. It’s Julie Garwood’s “The Bride.” It’s a historical novel, and it’s hilarious.
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All through college and then as a young adult, I was still reading romance novels. It didn’t really occur to me to write one until E L James’s “Fifty Shades of Grey” came out. At the time, I was working at a local newspaper here in Harrisburg. Everybody was passing “Fifty Shades of Grey” around the newsroom, and then it was my turn. I had it sitting out on my desk, and my boss comes up to me and he says, “I can’t believe you’re not embarrassed to have that on your desk.” And I was like, “It takes a lot to embarrass me, and I would never be embarrassed by something that I was reading.”
Then he wanted an article about the local chapter of Romance Writers of America. And he said: “Make sure you don’t talk to anybody who’s self-published. Those aren’t real books.”
I feel like I’m the kind of person that, as soon as somebody tells me that I cannot do something or that something’s not valid, I’m like, “Hold my beer.” I think, honestly, it was that moment when the seed was planted. So I decided I was going to write my own book. And it took me a year, I think, to write a really short novella. It was 35,000 words, and I did the research on how to put it up on Amazon. And I sold 35 copies.
Q: What was it called?
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A: “Cocktails at Seven.” When it didn’t immediately go gangbusters, I thought: “Oh no, the dream is dead. I need to be an adult and get a real job.” But then I got an email from another indie author and she said: “Your brother shared a link to your book on a forum that we were in, and I downloaded it and read it. I really liked it. I run a small publishing label. Would you be willing to rewrite this as a full-length novel and let me republish it for you?” And I was like: “The dream is not dead.”
Q: If you hadn’t gotten that email, do you think you would have written another book, or were you too demoralized?
A: I was demoralized enough that I wouldn’t have kept publishing. But I would have kept writing for myself, because I can’t stop.
Q: You’ve published more than 30 books. Is it ever difficult to find new stories?
A: I think my brain is really structured for this. It makes me a good writer and a not-so-great human, because I constantly have one foot in my brain at all times. I am mining every single conversation for something to use in stories, some kind of inspiration.
Q: Your books have sold well before, but the Knockemout books seem particularly popular. Why do you think the first book, “Things We Never Got Over,” resonated so much with readers?
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A: I think part of what made it resonate with readers is I was grieving when I wrote it. I have a friend Claire, and her husband, David, who was also a good friend of ours, passed away very suddenly. And I started the book that day, the morning he passed away.
The story came from the Jake Owen song “Down to the Honkytonk.” There’s a line in there about, “I got a dog named Waylon. I got a driveway that needs pavin’.” And I was like: “I want to write a story about that guy.” That was the first inkling. And so I just kind of fumbled my way through my grieving process and my writing process at the same time. And the story ended up being about being brave enough to love, even when you know that you’re going to lose someone. And I think I just bled it out into the page a little bit.
Q: Were you aware from the start that it was going to be a trilogy?
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A: No, which is terrible. The best way to write a series is to know that you’re writing a series and set everything up accordingly.
Q: It seemed as if you knew, because the spinoff characters for the second and third books seemed so obvious.
A: I knew that I wanted to write Nash’s story pretty early on. Early in “Things We Never Got Over,” Knox and Nash — they’re brothers — they get into a fistfight in the road, and during that fight scene, I was like: “Oh, gosh, I kind of want to know who Nash is. I want to know his story. Who is he going to fall for?” Because they were such opposites.
I didn’t even plan to have Lucian as a character. He’s their best friend from childhood. When he appeared on the page, I thought: “Who is this guy?” At that point, I knew I was writing a trilogy. That part of the process was really problematic, because I had to go back so many times while writing the first book to start filling in things that I knew I would have to pay off later.
Q: As a reader, I felt as if you were leaving all these breadcrumbs, so you must have had it mapped out ahead of time.
A: I had no idea. I was lying in bed one night and it hit me, just the whole overarching thing. It was like it existed out there, and I just had to find it, you know? It wasn’t like I had to make it up. But it worked. And I’m so, so thankful.
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